An ‘extremely rare’ double-lung transplant saves a terminally ill lung cancer patient in Chicago. Six months after undergoing life-saving surgery, the 54-year-old non-smoking patient is now showing no signs of illness and is even able to hit the gym again. The successful surgery offers hope to others living in the advanced stages of the deadly disease.
6 months after surgery, Albert Khoury’s lungs are working fine, there is no sign of cancer in his body, and he is living a normal life.
On September 25, 2021, Albert Khoury, 54, underwent a seven-hour operation at Northwestern Medical Center in Chicago to receive his new lung, according to reports.
Khoury has been putting the finishing touches on cement for the City of Chicago. In early 2020, he experienced lung pain and coughed up blood. He initially thought he had Covid-19, but was diagnosed with lung cancer.
Despite chemotherapy, Khoury’s condition deteriorated rapidly and he was told there was no chance of survival.
Now, 6 months after the surgery, his lungs are working fine, he has no signs of cancer in his body, and he is living a normal life. Khoury can even hit the gym without breathing support.
Albert Khoury’s preoperative chest radiograph.
Surgeons are generally reluctant to perform such transplants because if even a small amount of cancer cells remain, they are likely to regrow in patients taking immunosuppressive drugs to prevent organ rejection.
The few such surgeries in the past were unsuccessful, but medical advances since then have allowed doctors to better understand the spread of cancer.
Lung transplants for lung cancer are extremely uncommon, with very few reported cases, Ankit Bharat, chief of thoracic surgery at Northwestern Medical University, said in a statement. Lung transplants are considered a complete “no-go zone” for stage IV cancer patients, but with Albert Khoury’s cancer confined to the chest, surgeons are confident that the operation will remove all the cancer and save his life.
Anget Barratt (left), chief of thoracic surgery at Northwestern Medical University, talks with Albert Khoury.
Albert Khoury received new lungs after two weeks in intensive care.
The team had to remove the “trillions” of cancer cells from his lungs within six hours, while taking care not to spill the material into his chest cavity or blood vessels.
Based on this success, Barratt and oncologist YoungChae are developing a new set of protocols to determine who else might be eligible for the treatment.
Lung cancer is by far one of the leading causes of cancer-related deaths in the United States, accounting for nearly 25% of all cancer deaths. It is also the second most common type of cancer, second only to breast cancer in the United States. Nearly 250,000 Americans are diagnosed with lung cancer each year and cause more than 130,000 deaths.
Text/Southern Metropolis reporter Chen Lin