A lung transplant procedure last fall in Michigan resulted in the death of the patient and the illness of a surgeon involved in COVID-19, after the donor and recipient initially tested negative. Doctors say this is the first documented case of a transplant recipient contracting the virus from a donor.
The lung donor was a woman from the upper Midwest, according to doctors, and had suffered a severe brain injury in a car accident in November. She quickly moved on to “brain death”, according to the report recently published, and it was tested for COVID-19 before its organs were donated.
Her family said she showed no signs of COVID-19 symptoms in the days before the accident and had no travel history.
“We would not have used the lungs at all if we had a positive Covid test,” Dr. Daniel Kaul, co-author of the report at American Journal of Transplantation detailing the case, and the director of the transplant infectious disease service at Mighigan Mediciden told NBC News.
The recipient had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and was tested for COVID-19 prior to transplantation at the University Hospital in Ann Arbor.
“All the projections that we normally do and are able to do, we did,” said Kaul.
Three days after the procedure, the patient had a fever peak, her blood pressure dropped and it was difficult for her to breathe. Images of his new lungs showed signs of infection.
The test samples from his new lungs tested positive for COVID-19.
Four days after the procedure, the surgeon who manipulated the donor’s lungs tested positive for COVID-19.
In search of answers, doctors returned to samples taken from the donor. A test done 48 hours after obtaining the lungs gave a negative result for COVID-19. However, they were able to test a sample taken from the depths of the donor’s lungs. This sample was positive.
The genetic test showed that the surgeon and the recipient were infected by the donor.
The transplant recipient’s condition worsened, and 61 days after the lung transplant procedure, she died.
The surgeon recovered.
Although doctors involved in the study of this incident say this is the first confirmed case of transmission of COVID-19 from an organ transplant, other cases have been suspected.
THE CDC recently analyzed eight incidents since the start of the pandemic, but determined that the most likely source of the infection was exposure in the community or health environment.
The doctors who wrote the report, at the University of Michigan, are asking for caution and more testing during transplants.
“Transplant centers and organ procurement organizations should perform the SARS-CoV-2 test on samples from the lower respiratory tract of potential lung donors and consider improved personal protective equipment for health professionals involved in obtaining and transplanting organs. lung, ”say the report’s authors.
They also noted that because the donor and recipient were negative for COVID-19, following the accepted protocol, the health professionals involved in the procedure were not required to wear N95 masks and eye protection as part of their PPE.
The study encourages transplant centers to consider the benefits of N95 masks and eye protection during transplantation, even with negative COVID-19 tests.
No other donor organs were used.