Reporting in the journal Med, surgeons describe how they removed a patient’s infected lungs and built “artificial lungs” to keep him alive until a double lung transplantation was available. The work shows how the approach may serve as a life-saving bridge to transplantation.

“He was critically ill. His heart stopped as soon as he arrived. We had to perform CPR,” recalls Bharat, the lead author and a thoracic surgeon at Northwestern University. “When the infection is so severe that the lungs are melting, they’re irrecoverably damaged. That’s when patients die.”

The patient, a 33-year-old man, developed acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), a life-threatening condition in which inflammation and infection overwhelm the lungs. Triggered by the flu, his lungs deteriorated rapidly and were further compromised by bacterial pneumonia. Eventually, his lungs, heart, and kidneys started to fail. A double lung transplant became his only chance of survival.