“This is at least the first proven case of transmission of covid-19 via organ transplantation in the United States,” the director of Michigan Medicine’s transplant infectious-disease service said.
Three days after a woman received a double-lung transplant at a Michigan hospital last fall, she became seriously ill. She had difficulty breathing and a high…
COVID-19 has made life tough for everybody who needed health care over the last year, but especially challenging for transplant patients. The pandemic has disrupted the referral and listing process, led to the postponement and cancellation of many transplant procedures, and made it more challenging for transplant patients to get the pre- and post-transplant care they require.
For one woman with chronic obstructive lung disease, finally getting her transplant wasn t the happy end to her transplant story. In a recent case study, published in the
American Journal of Transplantation, doctors say a Michigan woman became infected with COVID-19 after receiving a tainted double-lung transplant from a donor who turned out to carry SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, despite showing no symptoms and initially testing negative. The unnamed woman died last fall, two months after her transplant at University Hospital in Ann Arbor.