MIAMI – Puerto Rican Yahaira Vega, 27, told EFE on Monday that she is “grateful for having regained laughter and life,” three months after receiving a double lung transplant, considered unprecedented due to her genetic condition as a patient with inverted organs in the chest and abdomen.
His condition is known as “situs inversus” and affects one in 10,000 people. Weeks later, African-American Dennis Deer, 51, with the same condition, also received two new lungs at the same Northwestern Hospital in Chicago.
The surgeries were performed at one of the pioneer lung transplant centers in the United States, where on Monday, during a press conference, the patients and members of the thoracic surgery team in charge of the medical feat were presented.
Vega, a resident of Elgin, Illinois, was the first to receive her transplant on April 28, and several weeks later, Deer, who lives in Chicago, received hers on May 22.
Both recovered optimally and returned to their daily lives and met on Monday during the press conference, according to the doctors.
“For the first time, I feel like I can achieve something now, that I’m no longer just a girl who could barely get off the couch,” Vega said.
“Before my transplant, I felt inadequate and hopeless. In many ways, I was like a baby again, sleeping all the time and unable to regulate anything that was happening in my body,” she said.
“With my new lungs, I have a lot of energy and can laugh again. I am grateful to my donor, his family and my amazing transplant team. Thanks to them, I got my life back,” she added.
INVERTED ORGANS
“Situs inversus is a rare condition that affects nearly one in 10,000 people and is often related to other problems, but most people can lead normal lives,” pulmonologist Catherine told the news conference. Northwestern’s Myers.
“Often, they may not even know they have the condition until they seek medical care for unrelated conditions. It’s even rarer for these people to develop lung disease to the point of needing a transplant,” he added.
Ankit Bharat, the hospital’s chief of thoracic surgery, opined that “it is quite rare to perform a double lung transplant on one patient with situs inversus, let alone two patients in less than a month and in the same health facility.”
The surgeon recounted that performing the surgery presents “an interesting dilemma” because the inside of the body is essentially a mirror image of what it would normally be.
“The heart is usually on the left side, but with situs inversus, it’s on the right side. The right lung is on the left side and the left lung is on the right side,” he explained.
“When we remove old lungs, we have to put in new lungs from a donor with normal organs. This is more challenging, because the new lungs have to fit into a chest cavity that is a mirror image, so we had to come up with some technical modifications to do it. “, he described.
Along with situs inversus, Vega was born with another rare disorder called primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD), which prevents the tiny hair-like structures in the airways from clearing germs and pollutants, causing a buildup of an excess of mucus.
The young woman said she began to get progressively ill several years ago and was listed for a double lung transplant in April. Nine days later she received the new organs from her.
Deer developed interstitial lung disease (inflammation and scarring of the lungs) due to polymyositis (inflammation and muscle weakness). In December 2022, he was sworn in as Cook County commissioner (where he based Chicago) from his hospital room while battling shortness of breath.
He was placed on the list for new lungs on March 31, and after spending the next several months hospitalized with oxygen support, on May 22 he received a call that a donor had been found for him.
“Being able to breathe again was amazing; I will never take life for granted,” Deer said. “I can’t stop thinking about other people who don’t have this opportunity, and I want to spend the next chapter of my life focusing on transplant awareness and organ donation,” she added.
Bharat said he was delighted that his team was able to help Dennis and Yahaira. “We are known for accepting some of the most difficult lung transplant cases,” he said.
