In 2023 thoracic surgeon Ankit Bharat was working at Northwestern Memorial Hospital when he was drafted to help a 33-year-old influenza patient who was on the verge of death. The sick man needed a double-lung transplant, but there was a problem: he was too sick for Bharat and his colleagues to attempt the operation.
So Bharat and his team worked up a plan: They would build an “artificial lung” that could help pump blood from the right side of the patient’s heart to the organ’s left side, oxygenate it and send it on to the rest of the body. The system kept the patient alive for two days, enabling him to begin to recover from the infection. Now, more than two years later, “he’s doing great, by the way,” Bharat says.
Similar systems to Bharat’s “artificial lung” have been [described by doctors](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053249819316298) before, says Matthew Hartwig, a professor of surgery at Duke University, who was not involved with the study. But Bharat’s method, he says, offers “a novel approach” to “the same problem that that everyone is facing” in the field. Bharat’s approach is described in a paper published on Thursday in the journal Med. And he hopes that it could ultimately mean there will be more success stories like that of the patient he helped save in 2023.
Ein Kommentar
Submission statement:
In 2023 thoracic surgeon Ankit Bharat was working at Northwestern Memorial Hospital when he was drafted to help a 33-year-old influenza patient who was on the verge of death. The sick man needed a double-lung transplant, but there was a problem: he was too sick for Bharat and his colleagues to attempt the operation.
So Bharat and his team worked up a plan: They would build an “artificial lung” that could help pump blood from the right side of the patient’s heart to the organ’s left side, oxygenate it and send it on to the rest of the body. The system kept the patient alive for two days, enabling him to begin to recover from the infection. Now, more than two years later, “he’s doing great, by the way,” Bharat says.
Similar systems to Bharat’s “artificial lung” have been [described by doctors](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053249819316298) before, says Matthew Hartwig, a professor of surgery at Duke University, who was not involved with the study. But Bharat’s method, he says, offers “a novel approach” to “the same problem that that everyone is facing” in the field. Bharat’s approach is described in a paper published on Thursday in the journal Med. And he hopes that it could ultimately mean there will be more success stories like that of the patient he helped save in 2023.
Read more: [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/doctors-keep-patient-alive-using-artificial-lungs-for-two-days/](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/doctors-keep-patient-alive-using-artificial-lungs-for-two-days/)