Doctors Show Charcoal-Black Lungs Of A 52-Year-Old Dead Chain Smoker [Video]

Doctors from Wuxi People’s Hospital, Jiangsu, China who surgically removed the lungs of a 52-year-old chain smoker, show it off in the viral video that has been viewed more than 25 million times titled ‘Do you still have the courage to smoke?’.

The shocking video has revealed the tar-blackened lungs of the chain smoker who was addicted to smoking for the past three decades. Rather than being the usual healthy pink, his lungs were so black in color and was extremely inflamed from 30 years of tobacco residue clogging onto it.

The patient had previously signed up to donate his organs after this death, but surgeons who operated on him quickly realized that they would not be able to make use of them.

"The patient didn't undergo a CT scan before his death. He was declared brain dead, and his lungs were donated shortly after that," said Dr. Chen, a Lung transplant surgeon and vice president of the facility who led the surgery.

They found the initial oxygenation index tests to be okay but later upon harvesting the organs for donation, they found them to be useless. He commented that although it would be impractical to deny the lungs of all smokers, there were strict standards that should be followed.

Chen said that lungs from individuals under 60 years of age, who have only recently died with minor infections in the lungs and relatively good x-rays are accepted and would be considered for transplantations.

“The patient had been suffering from lung pulmonary emphysema,” said Professor Peter Openshaw of the National Heart and Lung Institute. Pulmonary emphysema causes the lungs to get severely inflamed and expand, making the patients difficult to breathe. Also, he clarified that surgeons who harvested the lungs might have inflated them to make it look larger than the normal deflated lung postmortem.

Dr. Chen had posted the footage of the lungs to social media with the hashtag ‘jieyan’ which is Mandarin for ‘Quit Smoking’. He mentioned that several smokers in China might have lungs similar to this.

“Our team decided to reject these lungs for transplant. If you're a heavy smoker, your lungs may not be accepted even if you choose to donate them after death,” He said and added, “Look at these lungs - do you still have the courage to smoke?”