\n<\/p>\n
January 29, 2026<\/p>\n
3 min read<\/p>\n
Add Us On Google<\/span>Add SciAm<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Doctors keep patient alive using \u2018artificial lungs\u2019 for two days<\/p>\n Novel artificial lungs could help keep people whose lungs no longer function alive long enough to get an organ transplant<\/p>\n By Jackie Flynn Mogensen edited by Claire Cameron<\/span><\/p>\n New lungs (left) that were transplanted into a patient after he was kept alive with artificial lungs are seen next to his old lungs (right).<\/p>\n In 2023 thoracic surgeon Ankit Bharat was working at Northwestern Memorial Hospital when he was drafted to help a 33-year-old influenza patient who was on the verge of death. Bharat recalls that the man had developed a secondary infection from one of the \u201cmost dreaded bugs\u201d in the hospital, Pseudomonas, and had been put on a ventilator. The patient\u2019s lungs were filling with fluid and pus, his kidneys were failing, and his heart was \u201cbarely\u201d working, Bharat says. \u201cHe was actively dying.\u201d<\/p>\n Then the patient\u2019s heart stopped. \u201cWe got him back\u2014but it was very clear that we had to do something right away,\u201d Bharat says.<\/p>\n The sick man needed a double-lung transplant, but there was a problem: he was too sick for Bharat and his colleagues to attempt the operation. But Bharat knew that without a working set of lungs, the patient would die regardless. He had already been on a life-support system called extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or ECMO, to help him breathe, but that treatment doesn\u2019t work without lungs in a patient\u2019s body, Bharat says.<\/p>\n If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n So Bharat and his team worked up a plan: They would build \u201cartificial lungs\u201d that could help pump blood from the right side of the patient\u2019s heart to the organ\u2019s left side, oxygenate it and send it on to the rest of the body.<\/p>\n Chitaru Kurihara (left) and Ankit Bharat (right) operate on the patient, removing his damaged lungs and attaching the artificial lungs.<\/p>\n Bharat likens the novel system to adding a bridge to a highway\u2014like interstate traffic, blood travels from the right side of the heart to the lungs, then to the left side of the heart and then on to the rest of the body. With no lungs, the highway hits a dead end. Bharat\u2019s artificial lungs literally bridged the gap\u2014moving and oxygenating blood in place of the patient\u2019s lungs. And to prevent a \u201ctraffic jam\u201d on that bridge, Bharat\u2019s team also built an \u201cexit\u201d road for blood to return to the right side of the heart.<\/p>\n The system kept the patient alive for two days, enabling him to begin to recover from the infection. \u201cIt was almost like a curse or something that just got lifted,\u201d Bharat says. \u201cAnd suddenly everything started to heal.\u201d<\/p>\n The patient was placed on the lung transplant candidate list\u2014and hours later, he had an offer. The team took it, and after some extra weeks of recovering in the hospital, the man was discharged, weak but alive.<\/p>\n Now, more than two years later, \u201che’s doing great, by the way,\u201d Bharat says.<\/p>\n Similar systems to Bharat\u2019s artificial lungs have been described by doctors before, says Matthew Hartwig, a professor of surgery at Duke University, who was not involved with the study. But Bharat\u2019s method, he says, offers \u201ca novel approach\u201d to \u201cthe same problem that that everyone is facing\u201d in the field. Bharat\u2019s approach is described in a paper published on Thursday in the journal Med.<\/p>\n Bharat hopes his lung system can be used at other hospitals as a \u201cnuclear option\u201d to save patients who are critically ill. \u201cWe have described all the lessons that we\u2019ve learned in that paper, how we came up with every single configuration, what is the rationale behind it, and anybody can replicate that,\u201d he says. \u201cThere is nothing proprietary about this.\u201d<\/p>\n And he hopes that it could ultimately mean there will be more success stories like that of the patient he helped save in 2023. \u201cEven at the end of the day, if we save one extra life, we\u2019ll be happy with that,\u201d Bharat says.<\/p>\n If you enjoyed this article, I\u2019d like to ask for your support. Scientific American<\/span> has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in that two-century history.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been a Scientific American<\/span> subscriber since I was 12 years old, and it helped shape the way I look at the world. SciAm <\/span>always educates and delights me, and inspires a sense of awe for our vast, beautiful universe. I hope it does that for you, too.<\/p>\n If you subscribe to Scientific American<\/span>, you help ensure that our coverage is centered on meaningful research and discovery; that we have the resources to report on the decisions that threaten labs across the U.S.; and that we support both budding and working scientists at a time when the value of science itself too often goes unrecognized.<\/p>\n In return, you get essential news, captivating podcasts, brilliant infographics, can’t-miss newsletters, must-watch videos, challenging games, and the science world’s best writing and reporting. You can even gift someone a subscription.<\/p>\n There has never been a more important time for us to stand up and show why science matters. I hope you\u2019ll support us in that mission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" January 29, 2026 3 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm Doctors keep patient alive using \u2018artificial lungs\u2019 for two days Novel artificial lungs could help keep people whose lungs no longer function alive long enough to get an organ transplant By Jackie Flynn Mogensen edited by Claire Cameron New lungs (left) that were transplanted<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43148,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[5052,1564,546,366,939,2252],"class_list":{"0":"post-43147","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-alive","9":"tag-artificial","10":"tag-days","11":"tag-doctors","12":"tag-lungs","13":"tag-patient"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43147\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/43148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}On supporting science journalism<\/h2>\n
It\u2019s Time to Stand Up for Science<\/h2>\n