A Michigan woman contracted COVID-19 and died last fall after receiving a double lung transplant from a donor who was found to have the virus, according to a study.
The incident may be the first proven case in the United States in which the coronavirus was transmitted through an organ transplant, say the researchers in a report published by the American Journal of Transplantation.
“We wouldn’t have used the lungs at all if we had a positive COVID test,” Dr. Daniel Kaul, director of the University of Michigan School of Medicine’s Infectious Diseases Service at the University of Michigan and one of the study’s co-authors, said Kaiser Health News.
All the tests that we normally do and are able to do, we did, “added Kaul. The donor was an Upper Midwest woman who died after suffering a severe brain injury in a car accident.
The recipient had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and was operated on at University Hospital in Ann Arbor.
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The nose and throat samples collected from the donor and recipient were negative for COVID-19.
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However, three days after the surgery, the woman developed high fever, low blood pressure, heavy breathing and lung infection, according to the researchers.
The doctors decided to test for COVID-19 after the woman went into septic shock. Fluids taken from the lungs were also tested and the results were positive.
“History obtained from [the donor’s] family did not reveal travel history or any recent fever, cough, headache or diarrhea, “says the study.
“It is not known whether the donor has had any recent exposure to people known or suspected of being infected with SARS-CoV-2.”
Four days after the operation, a surgeon who had handled the donor’s lungs also tested positive for the virus, but later recovered.
Meanwhile, the transplant recipient quickly deteriorated. She died 61 days after the surgery.
Kaul concluded that the Michigan case proves that a broader organ sampling is needed before transplant surgery, especially in regions where there are more cases of COVID-19.