First Lung Transplant: 1963 (Dr. James Hardy)
In 1963, approximately two months before transplant surgery, 58-year-old prisoner at the Mississippi State Penitentiary serving a life sentence for murder, John Richard Russell was admitted to the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, Mississippi, with recurrent pneumonia unresponsive to antibiotics. He also had squamous cell carcinoma of his left lung, emphysema and also chronic kidney disease.
Thoracic surgery resident sought and received consent from the family of a recently deceased heart attack patient. He also used an endotracheal tube to keep the lungs ventilated and injected heparin into the heart to prevent clotting. When the time came, he removed the left lung and carried it to the adjourning operating room.
On June 11, 1963, when Dr. Hardy and his team first opened up Russell's chest to begin the transplant, they saw that his cancer had spread beyond the left lung. The transplant would not save his life from the cancer. However, it might give him better breathing. The team continued with the planned transplant of the left lung. The cancerous left lung had shrunk, and so had the space around it. The team made space for the new lung and changed a few of the planned vascular connections. Watts Webb assisted Hardy with the transplant. John Russell lived for another 18 days and then died of kidney failure in combination with cancer, and infection.
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