What makes a lung transplant difficult?

The medical world had long discovered a transplant for the heart, a kidney transplant,a bypass mechanism for many organs in the human body. They never thought it necessary to find a way for replacement or a bypass for our lungs. The time had come that there were too many "oldies" in Care Homes being spoon fed on an Artificial Life, with carers playing music and dancing and imitating a life they had already lived during their virile days.

That this "carnival was over" as their death rate was intolerable, was pressed hard by the Labour Opposition Leader, Sir Keir Starmer, during Prime Ministers’ Questions.in Parliament yesterday.

Of course, most things are beyond our control. But the things we can do something about are screaming for attention. The initiative to do something should not come out of compulsion or prompting, but that is what we are told is under consideration in faraway Vietnam.

                                                         

Vietnam Health Ministry held a meeting on 14 May 2020 about a 43-year-old British man in Ho Chi Minh City Hospital for Tropical Diseases since he developed fever and cough on 17 March. They decided that the only way to save his life was with a lung transplant.

His life has been on life support and is being treated with antibiotics and dialysis. They said his right lung has collapsed.

His case has been in the public limelight as regular updates are published on state media and many in the country have volunteered to help and wishing him well.

We are now told that 10 people including a 70 year old military veteran has volunteered themselves as lung donors. Prof Nguyen Van Kinh, an infectious diseases specialist said, doctors were “considering the option of performing a lung transplant for the patient”.

However, another report from abroad stated that Vietnam National Coordinating Centre for Human Transplantation (VNHOT) said current regulations “don’t allow to transplant lungs donated by most living people”.

We are also told that Vietnam has spent more than 5 Billion Dong (US$ 200,000) trying to save him.

Lung transplants have been performed by a medical team in east China’s Jiangsu province for a patient infected with COVID-19. They have also been performed in Michigan, USA recently.

Risks of a lung transplant in COVID -19

The major risk of a lung transplant, according to specialists, is organ rejection. “This happens when your immune system attacks your donor lung as it were a disease. “Severe rejection could lead to failure of the donated lung. Other serious complications can arise from the drugs used to prevent rejection”.

Doctors in Canada normally prefer keeping a person on the “extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machine” or on dialysis.

Lung transplants are not carried out frequently in UK. This is mainly because of lack of donors

                                                       

Are we “Future Ready”?

Not only do science find a correlation between our “genetic tendency” and our immunology to ACE2 receptors in CORVID-19, but they have traced  a Vitamin D deficiency and complication known as a “Cytokine storm” which occurs when our immune system goes into overdrive, turning not only against the virus but also against our own immune system.

A study has found patients with coronavirus have a severe deficiency of Vitamin D and those who have a blood group “A” and “B” are twice as likely to experience potentially lethal complications in their immunology, to be most susceptible to COVID -19. Those with blood group “O” tests have shown that they have an antibody already built in.

Race for Vaccine

                                                         

Besides, the race for who develops a vaccine for Coronavirus, there is also the fear that COVID-19 is continually “transmuting”. It is changing its symptoms, and the fear is that

In the process of mutation, it affects not only the vulnerable elderly, but also the young.

“Kawasaki” disease which overwhelmingly affects young and infants causes inflammation of the blood vessels and in some cases the swelling of the heart. The cause is still not known but studies suggest it is a post infection inflammatory response that is triggered specifically by coronavirus.

This is more so the reason why scientists are racing to find a vaccine. The Pharmaceutical giants Pfizer has begun testing multiple versions of experimental Coronavirus vaccines in health young people in the US last week, the first step in establishing the safety and dosage characteristics for trials.

Moderna Therapeutics platform development based at Cambridge, Mass. USA has received fast track approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its COVID-19 vaccine candidate mRNA 1273. We are informed it will speed the clinical trials by September 2020.

Victor Cherubim