Double-lung transplant in pt. w/ lung cancer.
-
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/double-lung-transplant-chicago-man-terminal-cancer/
"They discovered stage 1 lung cancer, but due to the COVID-19 surge, I couldn't begin treatment right away," he said in a statement.
By July 2020, his cancer progressed to stage 2, and, despite several rounds of chemotherapy, kept growing to stage 3 and stage 4.
Stage 4? That's metastatic. They transplanted him?
It was determined that he was in fact a candidate for transplant since the cancer, despite being stage 4, had not spread to other organs, and he received his new lungs after a two-week wait.
Isn't that what stage 4 means?
- T Tumor
- T1a: Primary tumor is ≤1 cm in greatest dimension.
- T1b: Primary tumor is >1 but ≤2 cm in greatest dimension.
- T1c: Primary tumor is >2 but ≤3 cm in greatest dimension.
- T2a: Primary tumor is >3 and ≤5 cm in greatest dimension.
- T2b: Primary tumor is >5 and ≤7 cm in greatest dimension.
- T3size: Primary tumor is >7 cm in greatest dimension;
- T3inv: Primary tumor invades the chest wall, diaphragm, phrenic nerve, mediastinal pleura, or pericardium;
- T3centr: Primary tumor is <2 cm to the carina or there is atelectasis of the entire lung;
- T3satell: Primary tumor is associated with separate tumor nodule(s) in same pulmonary lobe;
- T4inv: Tumor invading the heart, great vessels, trachea, recurrent laryngeal nerve, esophagus, or spine;
- T4ipsi: Tumor of any size with additional tumor nodule(s) in a different ipsilateral lobe;
-
T4 can mean different things.
The cancer is bigger than 7cm.
Or it is in more than one lobe of the lung.
Or it has spread into one or more of the following structures:
https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/lung-cancer/stages-types-grades/tnm-staging
Presumably it was the first case, then.
They didn't mention the "N" and "M" part of the TNM classification.
Still sounds like a very risky thing to do with a quite valuable set of organs. I wonder whether the doctors were really motivated by considerations of finding the best use for the lungs, or whether things like getting in the news/writing a paper/being the first to do ... also played a role.
-
@Klaus thanks for catching that. It's been forever since I looked at TMN classification, but your post reminded me that size of tumor can be a determining factor.
Interestingly, the Wiki link makes a >7 cm mass a stage 3.
I wonder whether the doctors were really motivated by considerations of finding the best use for the lungs, or whether things like getting in the news/writing a paper/being the first to do ... also played a role.
@jon-nyc would know more, but it might be that there was not a suitable recipient for this particular set of lungs other than the guy with lung cancer.
Liver transplants are done on patients with hepatomas and other tumors, iirc.
