The doctors came across a 34-year-old patient named Davey Bauer whose lungs were badly infected with a drug-resistant strain of bacteria and could not be replaced with a fresh pair of lungs in a single move. Although the medical specialists at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago had a machine that could have filled the space left by the missing organs for a few days while any remaining infection was cleared, there was no conventional way to fill the huge gap left by the patient’s lungs being removed from his chest.
The system took over the task of the lungs by balancing the gases in his blood
However, the surgeons devised an unheard-of solution for Bauer: a pair of DD breast implants placed where his old lungs once functioned.
“Someone who is actively dying and was so sick like David, generally, will have no option of transplant, and they generally just die,” stated chief thoracic surgeon Ankit Bharat, while speaking to CNN.
“We had to come up with a strategy to do something that we’ve never done before,” he added.
Bauer was a chain smoker in his early 20s, but he switched to vaping in 2014 while considering it a healthier alternative.
After he caught influenza in April, the doctors found his lungs in no state to cope, and he easily caught a secondary infection that was not getting cleared by any antibiotic.
Bauer, who was desperately short of breath, reached a St. Louis hospital, where he was put on an ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) system.
The system took over the task of the lungs by balancing the gases in his blood.
“Davey’s lungs were so heavily infected that they started to liquefy,” stated Northwestern Medicine pulmonologist Rade Tomic while speaking to Science Alert.
“If you looked at his X-ray, there was nothing left—the lungs were completely filled with puss. When we received a call from Davey’s medical team in St. Louis, we thought we could help him, but it was also very clear he wouldn’t survive the transplant in his current condition. He needed to clear the infection before we could list him for transplant, but the only way to do that was to remove both lungs. This was uncharted territory for us, but our team knew if we couldn’t help Davey, no one else could,” he added.