CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) — A former smoker from Missouri is alive today thanks to creative thinking by Northwestern Medicine doctors, who used breast implants to get him ready for a double-lung transplant.
After years of smoking and vaping, the flu turned into an antibiotic-resistant lung infection for 34-year-old Davey Bauer.
"I felt a little short of breath with coughing up a lot of secretions," he said.
He was admitted to a St. Louis hospital, where pulmonologists said his lungs started to liquify.
Northwestern doctors came up with a plan to remove his lungs so the infection could clear and get him ready for a transplant. Chief of Thoracic Surgery Dr. Ankit Bharat said they set up an artificial lung and quizzed a plastic surgeon about breast implants. The doctors settled on double-D implants to keep Bauer's heart from collapsing inside his chest.
Bharat, Bauer and Bauer's girlfriend Susan Gore spoke at a press conference on Wednesday, where Bauer held up a t-shirt that read "DD Davey."
In order to keep Davey Bauer alive, Northwestern doctors set up an artificial lung and devised a plan to use double-D breast implants to keep his heart from collapsing inside of his chest.Northwestern Medicine Media Relations
Gore said she still has a hard time wrapping her brain around the idea that her boyfriend was kept alive for two days on a kind of electric lung.
"Every time I would take a breath in, I was like, 'One for me; one for Davey,'" she said.
After months in the intensive care unit, Bauer was discharged in September, but he must stay near Northwestern for the next year for monitoring by his transplant team.
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