For the first time in Israel, two lung transplant procedures involving COVID-19 patients have been carried out successfully – one in which a recovered COVID patient not listed in serious condition received a donated lung, and another in which a lung taken from a recovered COVID patient was transplanted.
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Both transplants were conducted at Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer.
The patient who received the recovered COVID patient's lung suffers from chronic lung disease and his condition began to deteriorate rapidly. In the procedure, performed Friday, he received a lung from a 40-year-old man from northern Israel who contracted COVID-19 in January 2021 and recovered. After the donor died of unrelated causes at Galilee Medical Center in Nahariya, his family decided to donate his organs.
The issue of using COVID patients' organs for transplant has been the cause of some concern that transplants could transfer the virus to the organ recipients. But transplant pulmonologist Dr. Liran Levy, head of the lung transplant program at Sheba, explained that the organ donor's body had been tested for the virus, and found to be negative, and that the lung itself had not sustained any tissue damage from the virus.
Levy reported that the recipient recovered from the surgery and was progressing as expected.
In August, recovered COVID-19 patient Haim Zehavi, 64, received a lung transplant at Sheba.
"After I got the first vaccination in January, I got COVID. My condition got worse and I was hospitalized in intensive care at Sheba," Zehavi said. "Later, I was transferred to the respiratory rehab unit and then released from the hospital, but the main problem was that I developed a lung disease, and that along with the virus finished my lungs. I was sent home needing to be on oxygen, and I was really weak," Zehavi said.
Zehavi was put on the transplant list and three weeks later, Levy informed him that a match had been found. Zehavi said that his recovery has been difficult, but he is optimistic.
"Before the transplant, I couldn't do almost anything on my own. Since then, I've been doing things I never dreamed of," he said.
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Prior to Zehavi's procedure, Israel's medical establishment performed lung transplants on COVID patients only if their lungs had collapsed entirely and they had been on ECMO machines for months.
Levy heads the lung transplant program at Sheba along with thoracic surgeon Dr. Milton Saute, who has performed over 700 lung transplants.
"Since the outbreak of the COVID pandemic, we are witnessing many cases of major damage to lung function, to the point of lungs being completely destroyed," Levy told Israel Hayom.
"Beyond that, there are patients who recover from COVID who cannot be rehabilitated and do not return to optimal functioning. Unfortunately, we are seeing a number of people who because of COVID have become transplant candidates. In this case, the patient had not suffered from lung disease in the past, but COVID affected him so badly that he became a candidate for transplant," Levy explained.
Saute told Israel Hayom that "Thanks to the experience we have collected, the team we have put together and our partnerships with leading lung transplant centers in the world, we are able to handle even extreme cases."
