Vanderbilt University Medical Center revealed in an Oct. 8 press release that a COVID-19 patient was the recipient of a heart-lung transplant at the hospital, located in Nashville, Tennessee, on Sept. 24, 2020 – marking “the world’s first dual heart-lung transplant of a COVID-19 patient.”
The surgery, performed by Ashish Shah, MD, professor and chair of Cardiac Surgery, along with Matthew Bacchetta, MD, MBA, associate professor of Thoracic Surgery, was the first heart-lung transplant VUMC had performed since 2006, the press release said.