Hungarian surgeon performed Europe’s first lung transplantation on a coronavirus patient

Last week, György Lang performed Europe’s first lung transplantation on a coronavirus patient. The 45-year-old woman was operated at the Medical University of Vienna, which occupies a leading position as a centre for lung transplantations.

In his interview with Válasz Online, the surgeon explained that the 45-year-old mother was treated in Klagenfurt, and she was attached to an artificial lung for six weeks.

The colleagues at Klagenfurt felt that they had reached the end of their professional opportunities, so I immediately decided to take the patient,

said the doctor. He added that the procedure was not performed instead of other surgeries since Austria chose a different path in health care than Hungary: it did not reduce standard medical care radically but aimed to have enough capacity for coronavirus patients while being able to treat other patients. Additionally, Austria has not closed its borders to Eurotransplant, an international organ exchange organisation, so the donor organ arrived without any obstacles.

Dr Lang described the actions of the Austrian health management by three keywords: promptness, precision and proportionality. Although Hungary has been very successful in avoiding mass infections, it has to be noted that Austria has a lower fatality rate. In Austria, 670 fatalities have been registered so far out of nearly 17,000 infections, while in Hungary, this number is more than 500 out of less than 4,000 confirmed coronavirus infections.