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A breath of fresh air

People with lung disease are breathing easier under new transplant protocols

BY MARY HOFF

At first Gary Broberg figured it was just a matter of being 49. As winter 2004 turned to spring, the Mendota Heights father of two found he didn't have the energy he once did. He got winded going up a flight of stairs. It seemed he was always out of breath. He felt odd ... and old.

By Memorial Day weekend Broberg decided he'd better see a doctor. He was advised to exercise and lose weight. He also was treated for various ailments, to no avail. Finally, in July he was referred to a pulmonologist.

"It never dawned on me that there was something seriously wrong," Broberg says. "I thought, ‘They just have to diagnose this thing, and then there will be a pill or a shot or something to clear it up,'" he says.

Wrong.

After CT scans revealed severe lung scarring, the specialist diagnosed pulmonary fibrosis. The pink, spongy network of air sacs that had once made up Broberg’s healthy lungs was, for some reason—no one could say why—becoming stiff, useless tissue. Instead of going back to work with a quick fix, Broberg ended up at home waiting for a hospital supply company to deliver an oxygen tank.

Over fall and winter, Broberg’s lungs continued to deteriorate. In January he met with Timothy Whelan, M.D., a lung transplant specialist at the University of Minnesota Medical Center, Fairview, Transplant Center. In May he was added to the list of people waiting for donor organs. Then, on July 28, 2005, he received a new lung and a new life.

An organ transplant is a miracle under any circumstances. In Broberg’s case, it was doubly so. Recent changes in how donor lungs are procured and allocated dramatically reduced his waiting time and increased his chances of getting a transplant in time to save his life. Under the old system, his wait would have been close to three years.

"He clearly never would have lasted three years on a waiting list," says Whelan, an assistant professor of medicine and director of the interstitial lung disease program at the University. "He would have died, no question."

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