Fixing Leaky Lungs
Reported July 21, 2008
WASHINGTON, D.C. (Ivanhoe Newswire) — About 200,000 people a year are diagnosed with new cases of lung cancer. Until now, surgery required long and trying hospital stays, but a new development is making recovery faster — and less painful.
Joel Hammond is a man on the move. “I like walking because it gets you outside see the trees and flowers,” he told Ivanhoe. Hammond feared cancer surgery to remove part of his lung would slow him down.
“It frightened me to see that some of the lung surgeries could have you in the hospital for up to two weeks,” he said. Thanks to a new spray-on sealant called Evicel, Hammond’s made a remarkable turn-around.
“I’m not in bed,” he said. “I’m not recovering. I didn’t have to do chemo. There’s a lot of pluses here.”
Evicel was traditionally used to stop bleeding, but now doctors are spraying it on the lungs after surgery to stop air leaks.
“Our goal is to make sure the patient can leave the operating room without an air leak in most of the time,” Farid Gharagozloo, M.D., surgeon-in-chief at the Washington Institute of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery in Washington, D.C., told Ivanhoe.
The sealant contains two proteins found in human plasma. They start out in separate syringes and combine at the tip to form a material called fibrin. When you add air pressure, the gel turns into a white spray.
“The fibrin material matures into scar tissue as time goes on and basically becomes part of the healing process of the body,” Dr. Gharagozloo explained.
A clinical study found a 96 percent of patients who had the sealant applied after surgery had no air leaks in their lungs.
“It’s huge because it changes not only the patient’s experience with the operation, but it allows for the minimally invasive procedure to have shorter hospitalization,” Dr. Gharagozloo said.
Hammond is back walking every day. “Any day I wake up is a fantastic thing I’m living I’m breathing I’m here,” he said. Thanks to a successful surgery he’s excited about the road ahead.
Since Evicel is a human-derived product, it doesn’t cause allergies. It comes from donors who’ve been screened and tested for blood transmitted infections. This is a new application of the product, which is already FDA approved. As more studies are done, FDA approval of this new use will be explored.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:
Farid Gharagozloo, MD
Washington Institute of Thoracic & Cardiovascular Surgery
Washington, D.C.
(202) 775-8600
http://www.wcts.org