Doctors said a woman in Michigan, USA, died of infection with Corona 19 after receiving a lung transplant last fall. Although the organ donor initially responded negatively to Corona 19 and had no associated symptoms, the transplanted organ was infected with the coronavirus. According to a study published in the American Journal of Transplantation, this is the first case in the United States where an organ donor transmitted the’SARS-CoV-2′ virus, which causes Corona 19, to organ transplanters.
“If the lungs tested positive for COVID-19 before transplantation, I wouldn’t have used it,” said Dr. Daniel Cowl, the director of Transplant Infectious Disease Services at Michigan Medical, co-author of the study. “We did all possible tests in advance.”
Doctors tested for Corona 19 with samples taken from the neck and nose of a female organ donor who died after suffering severe brain damage in a car accident. The test result was negative. Usually, both organ donors and organ transplanters are regularly tested for disease infections.
The organ donor’s family said that the donor had never traveled recently and had no fever, cough, headache, or diarrhea. It is not known if the donor has recently been infected with Corona 19 or has been in contact with a suspected person.
The women who received the organ transplant were patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. He tested negative for COVID-19 a few hours before the transplant procedure.
The woman had a fever, low blood pressure, and respiratory symptoms worsening three days after receiving the transplant. Doctors took samples from the patient’s nose, throat, and lower respiratory tract after septic shock and cardiac dysfunction occurred to him and conducted a Corona 19 test. Samples from the nose and throat were negative, but a positive response to Corona 19 was confirmed in samples from the lower respiratory tract.
The patient’s condition continued to deteriorate over the next several weeks. He experienced multiple organ failure and developed respiratory problems that became worse and worse. He was treated with the antiviral drug’remdesivir’ and received recovery plasma twice, but his condition continued to deteriorate. He eventually died two months after receiving a lung transplant. As a result of subsequent tests, organ transplanters were more likely to be exposed to Corona 19 and infected by the organ donor’s lungs.
In 2020, there were nearly 40,000 organ transplants in the United States. When donating organs such as kidneys, heart, and liver, not lungs, Cowl said, the actual probability of transmission is low even if the donor is infected with Corona 19.
However, through this case, the corona 19 test on organ donors will be conducted more precisely in the future. “The results of this study suggest that when organ transplants are performed in areas with high rates of COVID-19, more extensive testing is needed than before,” Kaul told Kaiser Health News.
* Translated and edited the US version of HuffPost.