A brother and sister of a 35-year-old man suffering from a chronic lung disease successfully each donated a lower lobe of their lungs, saving his life. This was the first successful live-donor lung transplant in Israel, which was necessary because of the lack of donors.
Only about 300 such operations worldwide have been performed, mostly done in the US and Japan.
The surgery, which took nine hours, was performed Wednesday at the Rabin Medical Center-Beilinson Campus in Petah Tikva, near Tel Aviv.
The donors recovered quickly, while their brother remains in an intensive care unit of the cardiothoracic surgery department.
Prof. Mordechai Kramer, head of the Beilinson Pulmonology Institute, said the patient was diagnosed in 1991 with leukemia and received bone marrow donated by his sister. His body rejected the bone marrow and it caused severe damage to his lungs. The siblings were able to donate one of their five lung lobes, which will not grow back.