CHICAGO (WLS) -- The medical world is celebrating two innovative technologies Northwestern Medicine is using to help give patients a new chance at life, called "lungs in the fridge" and "lungs in a box."
The procedures make more donor lungs available for transplant.
Warning: The video in the player above may be unsettling for some.
Flanked by his surgeons, Tadd Crosslin is the picture of health.
"This has been fantastic," Crosslin said. "It's the best I've felt in years."
The Dallas-Fort Worth area native is as close to a medical miracle as one can get. After being diagnosed with terminal colorectal cancer which spread to his lungs, he's one of a dozen people who received a successful double-lung transplant through groundbreaking technology last September at Northwestern Medicine.
"The battle isn't over for me, but my timeline, you know, I don't know if I would be here without this procedure," Crosslin said.
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Wednesday morning, the hospital marked an important milestone in the innovative procedure, called that helped to save the life of the 49-year old husband and father.
First pioneered a decade ago in Canada and Europe, the process gives doctors a way to store the organ until surgery.
"Storing donor lungs at 10 degrees Celsius also allows for a more flexible transplant schedule previously these transplants would happen in the middle of the night," said Dr. Ambalavanan Arunachalam, lung transplant director.
The lungs can remain refrigerated for anywhere from 12 to 18 hours versus the traditional six hours.
The procedure was performed through Northwestern Medicine's DREAM (Double lung transplant REgistry Aimed for lung-limited Malignancies) Program. It is a first of its kind clinical initiative.
To date, more than 40 patients have received double lung transplants though the program as doctors use lessons they learned when they performed the first COVID-19 lung transplant in the United States.
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Doctors said there are several benefits to using lungs in a fridge, one being increasing the donor pool. The new technology will also shorten wait times for patients including those with advanced-stage cancer.
In 2024, the team began using lung in a box technology to repair the most number of donor lungs that weren't initially viable, shortening wait times of a recipient to an average of only four days.
"Like a blood bank, we can have organ banks and lung banks," said Dr. Ankit Bharat, Northwestern Medicine chief thoracic surgeon. "How amazing would that world look like?"
The hospital said its lung transplant program has done over 600 lung transplants procedures to date.
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With nearly 1,000 people awaiting a lung transplant, Crosslin knows he's blessed. After battling cancer for nearly nine years, he said it appears he's now cancer free.
"My lungs were full of cancer. I'm not sure just how much time I had left," Crosslin said. "I'd like to thank god for allowing me more time."