Saturday - The Hiccup

We found out today that Ben's new lungs are having trouble becoming accustomed to their new body. Given that his old lungs were quite badly scarred, the lungs themselves had shrunk and so did the cavity they fit into.

The new lungs are a little bigger than the old, meaning that they press in snugly against the other organs in his body. This extra pressure is unfortunately causing his new lungs to "collapse".

What does this mean?

When you and I breathe, we expand our lungs with oxygen and expel the carbon dioxide. The lungs after expelling still retain some oxygen. This is known as PEEP or Positive end-expiratory pressure. Ben unfortunately isn't retaining this PEEP naturally, due to the extra pressure of the organs pushing against the new lungs.

Whilst this is a hiccup we were told pre-transplant that these types of complications could happen. To help combat this we're needing to increase the oxygen flow to the lungs, meaning the ventilator for now go back to a "controlled" breathing state.. with the machine breathing for Ben. The target is to help over expand the lungs so that they get use to the new, now smaller, lung cavity.