Posted on 11/11/2013 7:31:11 PM PST by carlo3b
Lungs from pack-a-day smokers safe for transplant, study finds JoNel Aleccia, Staff Writer, NBC News
Jan. 29, 2013 at 4:35 AM ET
About 13 percent of double-lung transplants in the U.S. came from donors who were heavy smokers, a new study finds.
Using lung transplants from heavy smokers may sound like a cruel joke, but a new study finds that organs taken from people who puffed a pack a day for more than 20 years are likely safe.
What’s more, the analysis of lung transplant data from the U.S. between 2005 and 2011 confirms what transplant experts say they already know: For some patients on a crowded organ waiting list, lungs from smokers are better than none.
“I think people are grateful just to have a shot at getting lungs,” said Dr. Sharven Taghavi, a cardiovascular surgical resident at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia, who led the new study.
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
Over the years, smoking has been vilified and denigrated ad nauseum.
And lost in all the hoopla is one simple and revealing fact.
Worldwide, lung cancer is the number one cancer killer.
For smokers AND NON SMOKERS ALIKE!!!
We have a smoke nazi on FR who will be along shortly to disagree with you. I won't bother to name him, most people on this thread know who he is. - a liberal, disguised as a FReeper.
50 years for me, same results.
I just finally decided to quit, so I did - 5 years ago.
But does the recipient need to start or continue smoking to live?
My grandpa smoked those roll yer own (bag of tobacco in his chest pocket) and died of prostate cancer at age 87...so there’s that aspect. Lung cancer happens but not just to smokers so smoke it up and enjoy life.
It is all a divide and conquer scam to tax the crap out of a certain segment of society.
Kinda like Obamacare.
The trick with Obama care is they tax you based on a different type of addiction.
Addiction to Freedom, Addiction to independence, Addiction to Work.
Interesting indeed. My hope is that the lungs from a smoker DO NOT end up going to some anti-smoking nazi.
That is not gonna help anyone LOL
I started smoking in the Corps at age eighteen. Pall Mall. I quit for four years cold turkey and I was such a nervous wreck I took it up again. Marlboro Red. I’m a Type II diabetic and that’s what will probably get me.
But I’m not quitting again. No sir. I roll my own, burn and inhale a pack of filtered pipe tobacco filled butts a day. Those and two pots of coffee are all that’s keeping me alive. If it wasn’t for my bad back and neck I’d challenge you to a run. Breathing poses no problem whatsoever.
If I go before any of you you’re welcome to any of my gear you need to keep up the fight. But whoever gets these lungs had better smoke at least once a day to keep them in good working order.
Cheers.
Should be possible; I knew a guy once who got an organ transplant from a porn star. His wife was eternally grateful.
It’s more a matter of semantics. For the statement that “smoking causes lung cancer” to be true, everyone who ever smokes would need to get lung cancer, and this is not the case. However, smoking will increase a person’s risk of lung cancer by a statistically significant amount, and an individual case of lung cancer might well be caused directly by smoking.
This generally takes too long to explain in ordinary conversation, and most anti-smoking Nazis can’t understand it anyway.
Ted Kennedy died of brain cancer so just think: Someone could have got his liver.
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