Word: lungfuls
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...pumping the recipient animal's blood, reported Dr. Watts R. Webb, who worked on the project with Dr. Hector S. Howard at the University of Mississippi. The heart alone would be too difficult to move, said Dr. Webb, because of the many blood-vessel connections to the lungs. So his team tried transplanting the heart in combination with both lungs, and then with the left lung only...
...were closed, the organs were perfused with a solution to wash out all blood which might later cause clotting. Then the organs were cut out and stored in a preservative solution at 40° F. while the recipient dog was prepared. This animal was hooked up to a heart-lung machine which did its blood pumping and breathing as long as necessary. Then its heart and lung or lungs were cut out and discarded. Now the surgeons took the chilled organs from the refrigerator and implanted them. The aorta had to be sewn in place with the utmost care...
After the heart and both lungs were transplanted. Dr. Webb reported, the "spare-part" heart soon took over and kept beating as long as 28 hours before the experiment was abandoned. But the animal could not breathe by itself, without the aid of the lung machine, because the transplanted lungs had no nerve connections. If only the left lung was transplanted, the recipient's right lung still had nerve connections to transmit the breathing reflexes. In dogs so treated, the transplanted heart beat normally, and the unmatched lungs breathed, for as long as 18 hours...
...method is ever to be tried on a human heart-disease victim, where would the spare heart come from? Perhaps, suggest the doctors, from an accident victim. By keeping heart-lung systems chilled for eight hours and getting them to work again, the surgeons have now shown that there would be more than enough time for such a surgical swap. Indeed, as optimistic Surgeon Webb sees it the one major problem remaining is the immune reaction...
...endanger himself foolishly, Connell nevertheless admits that dangerous acts can sometimes be justified by the "principle of double effect" (both good and evil resulting from the same act, with the good more weighty). Scientists, he notes, have given preponderant evidence that excessive cigarette smoking greatly increases the probability of lung cancer, while moderate smoking increases the likelihood only slightly. Common sense shows that a slight danger may be risked, even if the only good that results is pleasure or relaxation (e.g., horseback riding is permissible, although there is a remote possibility that the rider may be thrown and killed). Therefore...