Vanderbilt Performs First Heart-Lung Dual Transplant Of COVID-19 Patient

Vanderbilt University Medical Center it performed a dual heart-lung transplant in September, marking the first time the procedure has been done on a COVID-19 patient. The patient was described as a young man with cardiomyopathy. Doctors said COVID-19 increased the damage to his heart and severely affected his lungs.

"He was slipping fast, in and out of the hospital and certainly by the time we operated on him, his heart was really done," said Ashish Shah, MD, professor and chair of Cardiac Surgery. Before the surgery, the patient had advanced heart and lung disease, News Channel 5 reports. Since the transplant, he is out of intensive care and recovering at the medical center.

Dual heart-lung transplants are rare in the United States, according to VUMC. The transplanted heart and lungs came from the same donor, which Vanderbilt said is standard procedure for dual transplants.

"This transplant, like every transplant we perform, serves as a great example of the critical role of teamwork in leading to good outcomes," said Kelly Schlendorf, MD, MHS, medical director of VUMC's Adult Heart Transplant Program. "It really does take a village."

The transplanted organs came from a donor who had hepatitis C. While in the past this has been a disqualifying factor, Vanderbilt has become one of the first centers to use these donors' organs for heart and lung transplants. In a release on Friday, Vanderbilt said it "continues to lead the way in pioneering this strategy, which has significantly increased the supply of donor organs."

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