Un récent article du New York Times partage des résultats d’un article publié dans Nature Medecine où les scientifiques ont ressuscité des poumons endommagés à l’intérieur de 24 heures en utilisant la circulation porcine et des respirateurs.
« The six lungs were taken from brain-dead patients and offered to transplant surgeons. But at major medical centers, one surgeon after another refused the organs.
They were damaged, swollen and soggy with fluid. Like 80 percent of lungs offered for transplant, these were just too far gone for the operation.
But researchers at Columbia and Vanderbilt saw an opportunity. They had been working for eight years on a system to restore damaged lungs.
They put each lung in a plastic box and attached it to a respirator so it could “breathe.” Then they connected each lung to a large vein in the neck of a live pig, so that its blood flowed through the vessels. »
