Ontario man believed to be first Canadian with COVID-destroyed lungs gets transplant

Timothy Sauve was brushing his teeth in December when he was hit by a dizzy spell that knocked him off his feet.

The 61-year-old from Mississauga, Ont., didn’t expect that to be the first sign of a COVID-19 infection. But within days he had developed a fever, experienced breathlessness in his sleep, and was rushed to hospital with a deteriorating condition that eventually required a doublelung transplant — believed to be the first done in Canada on a patient whose lungs were irreparably damaged by the virus.

Sauve, a healthy, physically fit man before he contracted the virus, saw the infection wreak havoc on his lungs over his two-month stay in the intensive care units of two different Toronto area hospitals.

While his lungs were scarred beyond repair, the virus didn’t damage any of Sauve’s other organs, making him a candidate for the rare procedure that saved his life.

“Things were pretty bleak,” Sauve said of his pre-transplant condition, fighting back tears during a phone interview from the University Health Network’s Toronto Rehab Bickle Centre.

“They told me my (lungs) weren’t getting better and for me to make arrangements to say goodbye to my loved ones.”

After consulting with his family and doctors, Sauve was transferred from Trillium Health Partners in Mississauga to UHN’s Toronto General Hospital, home to Canada’s largest organ transplant program.

A careful assessment at the Ajmera Transplant Centre determined he was physically strong enough to undergo a transplant in February.

Dr. Marcelo Cypel, the surgical director at the transplant centre who led the team performing the operation, said Sauve was on “very high amounts of oxygen” when he met him, and scans of his lungs showed heavy amounts of scar tissue called pulmonary fibrosis.

While he was only on a ventilator for a short amount of time during his transfer to the Toronto hospital from Mississauga, Sauve did need the advanced lung support therapy called extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) — a machine that pumps and oxygenates the blood.

Cypel said Sauve’s lungs had shrunk during his infection, becoming stiff and resistant to air.