Houston Chronicle by Todd Ackerman Sep. 16, 2020
When Memorial Hermann Hospital in The Woodlands allowed some of Francisco Medellin’s family to visit him from a window outside the intensive care unit last month, they all feared it might be the last time they’d see him.
Medellin, 69, contracted COVID-19 in June and despite interventions with the logical treatments, the disease ravaged his lungs, leaving him unable to breathe on his own. After a month of no progress, doctors told the family that there was little hope of him recovering.
“It was really sad,†said Maria Medellin, one of his daughters. “We thought the only thing we could do was pray. We hoped for a miracle.â€
Medellin got a miracle of sorts, a double lung transplant, one of the first in the United States for the disease caused by the coronavirus. Typically a last-ditch effort for people with seemingly fatal, irreversible lung damage, such transplants are now on the radar for COVID-19 patients who are both acutely ill enough to need one and otherwise healthy enough to benefit from a transplant for a protracted period of time.
Medellin qualified on both counts. He got two new lungs at Memorial Hermann’s flagship hospital in the Texas Medical Center on Aug. 27, just a day after he’d gone on the donor transplant waiting list, and by last week he was in rehab. Doctors expect he’ll be ready for discharge next week.
More:
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/health/article/double-lung-transplant-woodlands-covid-patient-tx-15570232.php
