Woman becomes second person to be cured of terminal stage four lung cancer

Doctors suggested Tannaz Ameli go into a hospice and get end-of-life care

Tannaz Ameli, 64, who underwent the procedure in June, joins Albert Khoury, 54, who successfully received the operation at Northwestern in 2021.

Ameli, of Minneapolis, Minnesota, has been declared cancer free having earlier been advised to seek end-of-life care.

Doctors usually refuse to offer lung transplants for patients at this late stage, with Dr Ankit Bharat, Northwestern's chief of thoracic surgery, saying they're a "complete no-no".

But, fortunately, for Ameli and Khoury, their cancer did not spread beyond their lungs, a rare characteristic for stage 4 lung cancer.

That fact made the pair perfect candidates for the operation, as surgeons could completely remove the disease.

“These are patients diagnosed with some forms of lung cancer that have spread within the lung, are out of treatment options and have limited time to live,” said Ankit Bharat, MD, chief of thoracic surgery and director of Northwestern Medicine Canning Thoracic Institute.

“In this unique program, we will include select patients with some forms of lung cancer that are limited to the lungs for the consideration of double-lung transplant if conventional or experimental treatments have failed. The purpose of DREAM is to provide the most comprehensive multidisciplinary care for these complex patients.”

Lung cancer is one of the leading killers of Americans, with the disease causing around 120,000 deaths each year. An estimated 240,000 cases will be diagnosed in 2023. In the UK, there are around 34,800 lung cancer deaths every year - around 95 every day - according to Cancer Research UK statistics from 2017-2019.

Khoury, a non-smoker who worked as a cement finisher for the Chicago Department of Transportation in early 2020, initially thought he had covid, but called his doctor after he started coughing up blood. He was later diagnosed with stage 1 lung cancer. Within months it was stage 2 and it continued to worsen.

Khoury was told "there was no chance for survival".

After his sister saw Northwestern Medicine pioneering lung transplants for covid patients, she persuaded him to make an appointment.

As Khoury's condition worsened, doctors considered operating, encouraged by the fact the cancer was not metastasising to different parts of the body.

The operation sees both lungs being removed and replaced by a donor's lungs in a single operation.

Doctors need to be extra careful that no cancer cells spill into the chest cavity or bloodstream, and cause the disease to spread elsewhere in the body.

But 18 months after his operation, Khoury still shows no signs of cancer and has been able to return to work.

He said: "My life went from zero to 100 because of Northwestern Medicine. You didn't see this smile on my face for over a year, but now I can't stop smiling. My medical team never gave up on me."

Ameli, a retired nurse and also a non-smoker, suffered a chronic cough in late 2021 and was later diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer.

When chemo didn't help, the hospital suggested she be transferred to hospice for end-of-life care.

Ameli's husband pushed for a second opinion and she ended up at Northwestern Medicine.

Surgeons there created a new technique to eliminate the cancer while minimising the risk of it spreading.

Dr Bharat said: "This innovative technique involves putting the patient on full heart and lung bypass, delicately taking both cancer-ridden lungs out simultaneously along with the lymph nodes, washing the airways and the chest cavity to clear the cancer, and then putting new lungs in."

Northwestern's new DREAM program offers other terminally ill lung cancer patients hope. The outcomes of the program's first 75 patients will be monitored in new research, called DREAM, to track the results of transplants.

Read more about Northwestern's operations here.

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