Doctors in Belgium have successfully preserved a set of human lungs outside the body for 11 hours to conduct a pioneering transplant operation, it has been announced.
Preserving the lungs enabled a double transplant to be performed on a patient whose liver had failed while the patient waited for new lungs.
Surgeons at University Hospitals Leuven implanted the new liver while the new lungs were preserved by a special machine.
Guidelines suggest that lungs should not be kept outside the body for longer than ten hours – but they are normally preserved in ice.
The surgeons used a machine called OCS LUNG, which provided continual flushing and oxygen at room temperature.
The operation was performed in July and the doctors say the patient has now left hospital and is in good health.
One of the doctors Dr Dirk Van Raemdonck said: "Normally, the lung transplant is carried out before the liver transplant. A donor lung typically can only be preserved outside the body for a maximum of ten hours. And a lung transplant can only be successful if the liver is still working properly.
"That is why we needed to transplant the liver before the lungs for this patient.
"The machine enabled us to keep the lungs outside the body for more than eleven hours with no negative effects, the longest period ever reported – a world first."
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