A Huddersfield girl is the first in the world to undergo a new type of lung transplant

A new life: Phillipa Bradbury Credit: Calendar

A Huddersfield woman has become one of the first to receive a lung transplant - where the organs have been specially reconditioned. 21-year-old Phillipa Bradbury has cystic fibrosis. She's been helped by experts who have found a way of cleaning and keeping alive lungs which were previously unsuitable for transplant.

Currently only one in five of the potential donor lungs available in the UK are used in lung transplants, the rest are turned down as they are in too poor a condition to safely transplant. Close to a third of those waiting for a lung transplant at any one time will never be matched with a donor organ.

Sadly, this means that many patients who would benefit from a lung transplant will die before suitable donor lungs are identified.

The new technique is being piloted by Newcastle University and Newcastle upon Tyne NHS Foundation Trust experts in a small scale study which could mean many more donor lungs become available for transplant.

Already shown to work in eight patients in the pilot, the study will now bring together all the lung transplant centres across the country to test the new technique to find out to what extent it could increase the numbers of donor lungs available for transplant on a UK wide basis.

The technique transforms previously unusable donor lungs into lungs which can be safely used for transplant. In effect the organs are cleaned and their function improved by attaching them, after they are removed from the donor, to a modified heart-lung bypass machine which pumps a specialised nutrient liquid through, while at the same time providing the lungs with oxygen via a breathing machine.

The shortage of organ donors in the UK is made even more dramatic for those waiting for lung transplant as donor lungs are particularly delicate and can be easily damaged by events that happen before their removal from the donor. That means patients are often called in for a transplant, only to have their hopes dashed because the donor lungs are in too poor a condition to safely go ahead.