Doctors save patient's life with artificial extracorporeal lung

Doctors in the Czech Republic have for the first time fitted a patient with an artificial extracorporeal lung, Novinky.cz reported. The procedure has only been carried out 20 times in the world, the news site said. It saved the life of a 35-year-old patient with severe pulmonary hypertension, who will subsequently undergo a lung transplant.

Medics at Prague’s General Teaching Hospital said that when the patient arrived in December she had been dying due to massive loss of blood from her lungs and heart failure.

Author: Ian Willoughby