A breathing lung transplantation was performed by doctors at the Krishna Institute of Medical Sciences (KIMS), Secunderabad, on Saturday. Doctors claimed that this was the first such procedure conducted in India.

The surgery was performed by director of the Lung Transplant programme Dr. Sandeep Attawar and his team on a middle aged patient with end stage interstitial lung disease with 10 litres of oxygen support.

The doctors said that breathing lung transplantation procedure helps in mitigating the ill effects of cold ischaemia time and improves lung function thereby increasing the organ utilisation.

“The idea of ‘breathing lung’ is to run the lungs through a device that cools the organ while it breathes, and nourishes it with a substrate enriched solution that has antibiotics that wipe out small traces of the infection. Cleaning of the air passages by means of bronchoscopy can be performed while on the machine as well as several tests can be done simultaneously to further assess and enhance the performance of the lung before it is cooled and then transplanted into the recipient,” as per a press release.

“Only a select few transplant institutions in the United States, Canada, and Austria take this approach to enhance lung transplant outcomes,” said Dr. Sandeep.