Raegan Cury Celebrates Lung Transplant: Mayo Clinic

Raegan Cury, who lives in Atlantic Beach, Florida, was diagnosed with bronchoalveolar lung cancer.
Unfortunately, following surgery to remove one lung and chemotherapy, additional cancer nodules throughout her remaining lung.
At Mayo Clinic, Cesar Keller, M.D., a pulmonologist in the Transplant Center, tried something never done before. During Reagan's lung transplant in 2004, he washed her remaining native airways with a chemotherapy solution to try to prevent any remaining cancer cells from inhabiting Raegan’s newly transplanted lung.
The transplant was successful. And the cancer never came back.
Raegan's was the first and last transplant for anyone with her condition. The next year, the lung allocation system changed, and the guidelines stated that outcomes for patients with Raegan’s disease were considered too uncertain to warrant transplant of a precious donor lung.
A lung restoration center under construction on Mayo Clinic’s Florida campus could change that by making many more donor lungs viable for transplant. Mayo Clinic is collaborating with United Therapeutics, which has developed technology to sustain and rejuvenate donor lungs, making previously marginal lungs suitable for transplantation and extending the time lungs remain viable.
To request an appointment, visit www.mayoclinic.....