Surgeons Perform First-Ever Robotic Double Lung Transplant on 57-Year-Old 'Adrenaline Junkie' (Exclusive)

Mar. 15, 2025

Surgeons in New York have become the first in the world to complete a fully robotic double lung transplant.

NYU Langone Health announced that on October 22, it successfully conducted the surgery on a 57-year-old woman, Cheryl Mehrkar, who was diagnosed withchronic obstructive pulmonary disease(COPD), an inflammatory condition obstructing airflow in and out of the lungs, according to theMayo Clinic.Surgeons used the da Vinci Xi robotic system, which had been used in the past for single lung transplants.

Mehrkar had inherited a genetic predisposition to lung disease and was diagnosed with COPD when she was 43, only to see her condition worsen after she got COVID in 2022. Until then she had been an “adrenaline junkie” and thrill-seeker. She was a motorcyclist, a scuba divemaster, and a karate black belt with her husband Shahin. But COPD started to get in the way of many of her adventures, and she soon found herself on the transplant waiting list.

Finally, in October, it was her turn. And the procedure was historic.

“Normally we give [patients] either a really big incision across their entire chest or two really big incisions to do the transplant,” explainsDr. Stephanie Chang— associate professor and surgical director of theLung Transplant Programfor theNYU Langone Transplant Institute— and the lead surgeon.

“With the robot system, we actually put in four small arms that are half an inch and then we give them a two to two and a half inch incision on the side. And through that, that’s where we can take the lung in and out. So instead of doing all of the surgery through a big incision that’s the size of most of your chest, we can do it through multiple small ones.”

Chang says that she and her team of surgeons prepared for the seven-hour surgery for six months. They also performed three single robotic lung transplants in the five weeks beforehand in order to perfect the procedure and their workflow.

Through the robotic system, Chang says patients “seem to have less pain and a bit of a faster recovery afterwards.”

“Dr. Chang was very honest,” Mehrkar tells PEOPLE. “She said to me, ‘Listen, we’d like to do this robotically with both lungs. We’ve never done it before. You’d be the first in the world. We might not be able to do that, so don’t get your hopes up. If we can’t, we’ll do one side robotically and one side manually.’”

“I trusted them entirely,” she adds. “So there was excitement about being the first in the world, but there was also that reality that it could not happen. But when I woke up and they said, ‘Cheryl, we did it,’ my only reaction was ‘Oh my God!’”

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Chang boasted that she’s extremely happy with how well Mehrkar’s lungs responded throughout the entire surgical process and recovery and she’s “doing fantastic” now.

“Cheryl made that comment that other programs weren’t really focused on her quality of life,” she says. “And for us, one of the main things is we’re not just trying to prolong her life, but help her go back to enjoying her day-to-day life. She’s doing great, so she will hopefully be back to doing all those things she loves soon.”

Since the surgery, Mehrkar says her breathing has completely turned around. She was discharged from the hospital and returned home on Nov. 20.

Mehrkar, whose family created aGoFundMepage on her behalf, recalls her condition getting to a point where she was unable to walk across the room without struggling to breathe. Now, she’s “doing so much better” and is looking forward to getting back to her active lifestyle.

“I could breathe better the second I was able to open my eyes and take a deep breath. My breathing has improved 100%. I could feel it right away,” she says. “I’m just so happy.”

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Mehrkar praised how much NYU Langone is “very patient centric,” which she says really impacted how well she was able to recover. “Dr. Chang is just an angel,” she adds.

Coming off of the success of the breakthrough surgery, Chang says the robotic systems will hopefully continue to transform the medical field.

“I think the robotic platform has grown a lot in the last decade,” she tells PEOPLE. “So I think this is kind of the first step towards doing more and more minimally invasive transplantation. And hopefully that leads to better patient recovery, better pain control and better outcomes.”

source: people.com