Toronto doctors removed young Ontario mother’s diseased lungs to buy her time for lung transplant
A woman who underwent surgery to have her lungs removed was kept alive artificially for six days until she regained enough strength to receive donor lungs, doctors at Toronto General Hospital said, calling the life-saving effort a world-first success.
Melissa Benoit, 33, was born with cystic fibrosis — a genetic disease that can cause phlegm buildup in the lungs and affect the digestive system. Last April, the Burlington, Ont., resident had a bout with influenza that required her to receive oxygen and then go into intensive care.
While risky, taking out her lungs removed the source of her sepsis problem, said Dr. Shaf Keshavjee, director of TGH’s lung transplant program.
“It was her only option,” Keshavjee said. “For the first time ever, we had a patient in our intensive care unit with no lungs. In fact, she technically was on an artificial lung, an artificial heart and an artificial kidney for six days.”
Previously on Ismailimail…
Ismailimail 
This is an amazing and indescribably miraculous achievement by Dr Shaf Keahavjee(by far the most famous member of the 2000-strong Keshavjee family the world over) and his large surgical and medical team!! It seems that every few months he comes up with a new achievement. Kudos to the University Health Network and the Toronto General hospital, the donor and recipient families too.
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It is not common to have one surgeon with an excellent pair of surgical hands and a razor-sharp research brain to come up with mind-boggling innovations. In Professor Shaf Keshavjee we have the rare combination of both! Mashallah!
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“In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God”(Aga Khan IV, July 23rd 2008, Lisbon, Portugal)
“……The Quran tells us that signs of Allah’s Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation – in the heavens and the earth, the night and the day, the clouds and the seas, the winds and the waters….”(Aga Khan IV, Kampala, Uganda, August 22 2007)
“….in Islam, but particularly Shia Islam, the role of the intellect is part of faith. That intellect is what seperates man from the rest of the physical world in which he lives…..This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives. Of that I am certain”(Aga Khan IV, Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, August 17th 2007)
“Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly”(Aga Khan IV, Toronto, Canada, 8th June 2005)
“A thousand years ago, my forefathers, the Fatimid imam-caliphs of Egypt, founded al-Azhar University and the Academy of Knowledge in Cairo. In the Islamic tradition, they viewed the discovery of knowledge as a way to understand, so as to serve better God’s creation, to apply knowledge and reason to build society and shape human aspirations”(Aga Khan IV, Speech, 25th June 2004, Matola, Mozambique.)
“Education has been important to my family for a long time. My forefathers founded al-Azhar University in Cairo some 1000 years ago, at the time of the Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt. Discovery of knowledge was seen by those founders as an embodiment of religious faith, and faith as reinforced by knowledge of workings of the Creator’s physical world. The form of universities has changed over those 1000 years, but that reciprocity between faith and knowledge remains a source of strength”(Aga Khan IV, 27th May1994, Cambridge, Massachusets, U.S.A.)
“Muslims believe in an all-encompassing unit of man and nature. To them there is no fundamental division between the spiritual and the material while the whole world, whether it be the earth, sea or air, or the living creatures that inhabit them, is an expression of God’s creation.”(Aga Khan IV, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA, 13 April 1984)
“Our religious leadership must be acutely aware of secular trends, including those generated by this age of science and technology. Equally, our academic or secular elite must be deeply aware of Muslim history, of the scale and depth of leadership exercised by the Islamic empire of the past in all fields”(Aga Khan IV, 6th February 1970, Hyderabad, Pakistan)
“The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being”(Aga Khan III, April 4th 1952, Karachi, Pakistan)
“Nature is the great daily book of God whose secrets must be found and used for the well-being of humanity”(Aga Khan III, Radio Pakistan, Karachi, Pakistan, February 19th 1950)
“In fact this world is a book in which you see inscribed the writings of God the Almighty”(Nasir Khusraw, 11th century Fatimid Ismaili cosmologist-philosopher-poet)
“Seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave”(Prophet Muhammad, circa 632CE)
“Seek knowledge, even in China”(Prophet Muhammad, circa 632CE)
“One hour of contemplation on the works of the Creator is better than a thousand hours of prayer”(Prophet Muhammad, circa 632CE)
“The ink of the scholar is better than the blood of the martyr”(Prophet Muhammad, circa 632CE)
“All human beings, by their nature, desire to know.”(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, circa 322BC)
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