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Double lung transplant saves Chicago man with terminal cancer

Doctors have successfully performed a double lung transplant on a non-smoker with terminal lung cancer in an 'extremely uncommon' procedure that will give hope to others with advanced stages of the deadly disease. 

Albert Khoury, 54, underwent a seven-hour surgery to receive his new lungs at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago on September 25, 2021.

Khoury had been working as a cement finisher for the City of Chicago when, in early 2020, he experienced pain and coughed up blood. 

He first assumed he had Covid but was diagnosed with stage 1 lung cancer which, despite chemotherapy, advanced quickly and he was told he had no chance of survival. 

Now, six months after his surgery, the lungs are working well and he has no signs of cancer in his body and is leading a normal life. He is even able to go to the gym without needing breathing support.  

Provided by Daily Mail Albert Khoury (pictured), 54 - a non-smoker - is now cancer-free six months after a double lung transplant saved his life, giving hope to others with advanced stages of the disease.

 He said: 'My life went from zero to 100 because of Northwestern Medicine. You didn't see this smile on my face for over a year, but now I can't stop smiling.'

Surgeons are generally reluctant to proceed with such transplants because if there are even a few cancerous cells remaining, there is a strong chance they will regrow in a patient taking immune-suppressing medications to prevent organ rejection.

The few such procedures in the past have not been successful, but since then, advances have allowed doctors to better understand cancer's spread.   

 'Lung transplantation for lung cancer is extremely uncommon with few cases reported,' Ankit Bharat, chief of thoracic surgery at Northwestern Medicine, said in a statement. 

'For patients with stage 4 cancer, lung transplantation is considered a complete 'no-no,' but because Albert's cancer was confined only to his chest, we were confident we could clear all the cancer during surgery and save his life.' 

In early 2020, Khoury was working as a cement finisher for the city of Chicago, when he began to experience back pain, sneezing, chills, cough and mucus. At first he assumed it was Covid, but called his doctor when he coughed up blood.

'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.

He was told there was no chance of survival, but his sister told him about the pioneering lung transplants at Northwestern. 

In 2020, Bharat led a team that performed the first double lung transplant on a woman in her twenties whose lungs had been decimated by Covid.

Khoury came under the care of oncologist Young Chae at Northwestern who wanted first to try other cancer-fighting treatments - but his health kept declining, leaving him in an intensive care unit with pneumonia and sepsis.

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.The team had to remove 'trillions' of cancer cells all over his lungs within a six hour time frame, all the while taking care not to spill material into his chest cavity or blood stream.

'It was an exciting night,' said Bharat.   

Based on the success, Bharat and Chae are developing a new set of protocols to determine who else might be eligible for such treatment.

Lung cancer is by far the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States making up almost 25 percent of all cancer mortalities.