CHICAGO (CBS) --A California doctor who was battling advanced-stage lung cancer is now cancer-free, after surgeons at Northwestern Memorial Hospital completed the first-ever lung and liver transplant on a cancer patient.
Dr. Gary Gibbon received two new lungs and a liver six months ago. Last year, doctors diagnosed the Santa Monica lung specialist with stage 3 lung cancer.
"The irony is not lost on me that, as a pulmonologist, allergist, and immunologist, it was shocking to receive a diagnosis of lung cancer," he said.
Cancers of the lung are the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States, with more people dying of lung cancer than colon, breast and prostate cancers combined.
Gibbon underwent chemotherapy, radiation, and immunotherapy, but the treatments destroyed his lungs and damaged his liver beyond repair.
In September, he was flown to Northwestern Medicine in Chicago for life-saving surgery.
"Something of this magnitude had never been done in a patient with active cancer," said Dr. Ankit Bharat, chief of thoracic surgery at Northwestern.
Bharat removed Gibbon's cancer-ridden lungs and transplanted the new ones, taking care to clear his airways and chest cavity of what could be billions of highly resistant cancer cells.
"We used some of those same principles that we used in COVID transplants to apply to patients who have those advanced lung cancers to carefully take those lungs out without spilling even a single cancer cell from the blood stream," Bharat said.
All the while, Gibbon's donor liver was inside a liver perfusion device – relatively new technology supplying the organ with warm oxygenated blood, keeping it alive until transplantation.
"We're in a renaissance of transplantation right now," said Dr. Satish Nadig, chief of organ transplantation at Northwestern.
Today, Gibbon is cancer-free. Doctors at Northwestern presented him with a new stethoscope on Thursday to listen to his new lungs.
"Anyone who came into contact with me and took care of me is an angel forever in my life," Gibbon said.
Gibbon just celebrated his 69th birthday and is hoping for many more.
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