California doctor with cancer gets rare lung-liver transplant in Chicago at Northwestern Memorial Hospital

Doctor now cancer-free after rare transplant surgery at Northwestern

CHICAGO (CBS) -- A California doctor who was battling advanced-stage lung cancer is now cancer-free, after surgeons at Northwestern Memorial Hospital completed the first-ever lung and liver transplant on a cancer patient.

Dr. Gary Gibbon received two new lungs and a liver six months ago. Last year, doctors diagnosed the Santa Monica lung specialist with stage 3 lung cancer.

Dr. Gary Gibbon in his bed at Northwestern Memorial Hospital before life-saving double lung and liver transplant. Northwestern Medicine

"The irony is not lost on me that, as a pulmonologist, allergist, and immunologist, it was shocking to receive a diagnosis of lung cancer," he said.

Cancers of the lung are the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States, with more people dying of lung cancer than colon, breast and prostate cancers combined.

"Something of this magnitude had never been done in a patient with active cancer"  

Gibbon underwent chemotherapy, radiation, and immunotherapy, but the treatments destroyed his lungs and damaged his liver beyond repair.

In September, he was flown to Northwestern Medicine in Chicago for life-saving surgery.

"Something of this magnitude had never been done in a patient with active cancer," said Dr. Ankit Bharat, chief of thoracic surgery at Northwestern.

Surgeons at Northwestern Memorial Hospital performed a double lung and liver transplant on California lung specialist Dr. Gary Gibbon after he was diagnosed with stage 3 lung cancer, and chemotherapy, radiation, and immunotherapy treatments destroyed his lungs and liver. Northwestern Medicine

Bharat removed Gibbon's cancer-ridden lungs and transplanted the new ones, taking care to clear his airways and chest cavity of what could be billions of highly resistant cancer cells.

"We used some of those same principles that we used in COVID transplants to apply to patients who have those advanced lung cancers to carefully take those lungs out without spilling even a single cancer cell from the blood stream," Bharat said.

"We're in a renaissance of transplantation right now"

All the while, Gibbon's donor liver was inside a liver perfusion device – relatively new technology supplying the organ with warm oxygenated blood, keeping it alive until transplantation.

"We're in a renaissance of transplantation right now," said Dr. Satish Nadig, chief of organ transplantation at Northwestern.

Today, Gibbon is cancer-free. Doctors at Northwestern presented him with a new stethoscope on Thursday to listen to his new lungs.

Dr. Gary Gibbon (left) talks to Dr. Ankit Bharat, after undergoing a successful double lung and liver transplant at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Northwestern Medicine

"Anyone who came into contact with me and took care of me is an angel forever in my life," Gibbon said.

Gibbon just celebrated his 69th birthday and is hoping for many more.

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