A donor, who tested negative, infected a recipient by transplanting her lungs before she died of Covid.
- Prior to the transplant, doctors performed a Covid test from samples taken from the victim’s nose and throat, both of which were negative.
- Three days after the operation, the recipient began to experience what appear to be symptoms of Covid-19 infection.
This is a very rare case. In the state of Michigan, in the United States, a woman has died following a transplant of lungs contaminated with Covid-19. The donor had however tested negative in the PCR test carried out before this operation. Doctors reported this case on February 10 in theAmerican Journal of Transplantation.
First known case of graft infection
The recipient received a transplant of two lungs from a woman who died of a severe brain injury after a car accident. Before the transplant, doctors performed a Covid test on samples taken from the victim’s nose and throat. They turned out to be negative. However, three days after the operation, the recipient began to feel what are similar to symptoms of Covid-19 infection: fever, drop in blood pressure, respiratory problems… Two months later, she died of aftermath of his infection.
This is the first known American case in the United States of transplant contamination as more than 40,000 transplants were performed in 2020.”We absolutely would not have used the lungs if we had had a positive Covid test,” said Dr. Daniel Kaul, director of Michigan Medicine’s Infectious Disease Transplant Service and co-author of the paper that describes this story, when interviewed by NBC News.
In addition, four days after the operation, the surgeon who performed the transplant also tested positive for the virus. Genetic testing revealed that he too was infected during the transplant. Studies will be conducted to find out if other organs can also transmit the virus.
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