Tampa General improving lung transplants

Meantime, doctors at Tampa General Hospital are keeping hope alive for lung transplant patients. They have a new way of testing a donor's lungs before they even reach the recipient's body. It's called an ex vivo machine. And FOX 13's Evan Axelbank is in the newsroom now to explain how it works. Evan? Well, one of the problems or one of the difficulties with lungs is that they are a fragile organ to move from person to person during a transplant. And most of them are not suitable for a transplant. That's why they need as many donors as possible. This is the ex vivo lung perfusion machine. Think of it as a way station for lungs between the donor and recipient's bodies. It is able to test 10 different aspects of lung performance. They have now done three transplants with that machine at TGH. It also injects blood and oxygen to see how the lung reacts, the donor lung. that can prevent the implantation of a lung that won't function properly for a particular patient. We are removing all the risks because if we took lungs, we are not sure about the pulmonary function or the graft function. You put it on a recipient, you're not sure about the outcomes, and then you are having this risk with your recipient, which should not happen as well. We are honoring this gift, but we should not take risk on the recipient side. So that's what we are doing. We are rehearsing for the transplant, but without any risk to the recipient. One reason they need as many donor lungs as possible is because only 20% of lungs can even be used in surgery. That's why they continue to need people to step up and be organ donors. Many patients wind up dying waiting for the right donor. The ex vivo machine tests lungs on 10 different factors, including to see how well it oxygenates blood, how solid the material in the lung is and how well the lung is expanding and contracting before they put it into a patient. TGH just broke their all-time record of lung transplants in a year. They're now up to 62 for the year, and the previous record was 58 set 16 years ago. So because there are still two more months left in the year, you can see they're going at a very feverish clip there, but certainly a fascinating machine, Chris. It really is helping them make sure that they put the right lungs into the right people. Yeah, sounds like it'll make the difference between life and death for people on that list. All right, Evan Axelbank live for us. Thanks, Evan.