From Too Risky to Last Resort, COVID-Related Organ Transplants Are Surging
Mark Buchanan from Roopville, GA didn’t think he was going to survive the COVID-19 pandemic. He and his entire family came down with a nasty bout of the disease, but no one wound up in the hospital except him. He was on a ventilator, sedated for nearly three months before starting extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), a last-resort effort to save patients dying of the disease.
“They said that it had ruined my lungs,” Buchanan said. “The vent and the covid ruined ’em completely.”
However, his luck changed after becoming one of the first people in the U.S. to receive what’s being referred to as a COVID-related transplant. He received a double lung transplant in October at a time when few hospitals were willing to take a chance on the procedure. Now, these kinds of transplants are soaring all over the country.
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New Jersey businessman sues United States Attorney General Merrick Garland for right to sell his own ORGANS and says its unfair people can donate body parts but not profit from them
John Bellocchio, 37, sued the federal government arguing that if he and other Americans can legally donate organs, they should also be able to sell them
He says allowing people to sell their organs will eliminate the black market and shorten wait list for people waiting on live-saving donor operations
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Apr 14, 2021
In a year when covid-19 shattered the pleas of so many who prayed for miracles, a Georgia man with two new lungs is among the fortunate.
Mark Buchanan, of Roopville, received a double-lung transplant in October, nearly three months after covid left him hospitalized and sedated, first on a ventilator and then on the last-resort treatment known as ECMO.
“They said that it had ruined my lungs,” said Buchanan, 53, who was a burly power company lineman when he fell ill. “The vent and the covid ruined ’em completely.”
At the time, only a handful of U.S. hospitals were willing to take a chance on organ transplants to treat the sickest covid patients. Too little was known about the risks of the virus and lasting damage it might cause, let alone whether such patients could survive the surgery. Buchanan was turned down at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, according to his wife, Melissa, who said doctors advised her to withdraw treatment and allow him to die peace