Speaker Tracy Townsend: It took every ounce of energy for a man to take a breath. Speaker George Koster: I couldn't get out of this chair and walk to you. [Video clip of a lung transplant] Speaker Townsend: Ahead of 5:45, the new dome keeping transplant lungs alive and giving recipients a new lease on life. In Healthsource 10, it's really hard to imagine living with end-stage lung disease, struggling to breathe, and desperate for new lungs. [Text on screen: Lung transplant Tracy Townsend] The odds may not be in your favor, as 80% of lungs that become available for transplant can't be used. Well now there's new technology being tested right here in central Ohio that could change that, and what you're about to see is amazing science—really, you have got to see this.And you're also going to meet a man who will tell you, it's new life. [Text on screen: Easy Breathing New Dome Protects Lung Before Transplant] Speaker Koster: It's 100% different. [Video clip of George Koster in a hospital chair being interviewed] Speaker Townsend: George Koster is talking about life after end-stage lung disease. Each of these steps, a milestone, after fighting through pulmonary fibrosis—a lung scarring respiratory disease. [Video clip of Koster using a walker in the hospital hallway] Speaker Koster: I couldn't get out of this chair and walk to you. Speaker Townsend: The official diagnosis came in December of 2015. It was life changing for Koster and his wife, Leslie. [Text on screen: George Koster Lung Transplant Recipient] Speaker Koster: They immediately put me on oxygen, I was on six liters. Speaker Townsend: Six liters became ten, and then the maximum of 15 liters and severe limits. [Images of liters of oxygen] Speaker Koster: I go to church on Sunday, I go to rehab twice a week, and I was faithful to that. Speaker Townsend: Koster needed a lung transplant, had been waiting when donor lungs arrived at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical center. [Video clip of an ex vivo lung perfusion] Ten TV was there too, as the transplant team treated the lungs in the sterile plastic dome, for what's called ex vivo lung perfusion, or EVLP. [Text on screen: Dr. Bryan Whitson OSU Wexner Medical Center] Speaker Dr. Bryan Whitson: It's a technology that lets us resuscitate and recondition lungs and organs prior to transplant. Speaker Townsend: Surgeons say it's a game changer because 80% of lungs that come to transplant have to be thrown away. EVLP allows the chance to change that by, essentially, saving lungs damaged by severe cases of pneumonia or excess fluid, for example. [Text on screen: Dr. Amy Pope-Harman OSU Wexner Medical Center] Speaker Dr. Amy Pope-Harman: So being able to give the lungs time to tune up and to show what they're going to be capable of doing. Speaker Townsend: And then there's George Koster, who says he and the donor family are proof the process works, too. [Video clip of Koster using a walker in the hospital hallway] Speaker Koster: I've been given life twice: once by my God, and second by another family that said, "Hey, let him have these lungs." Speaker Townsend: Koster will continue his recovery at The OSU Wexner Medical Center for the next several weeks. It's one of 17 centers in the nation studying this technology, and doctors believe this method could double the number of lungs available for transplant, so we will certainly monitor that. Speaker 1: That is fabulous just to think that that technology is here, and he's an example of it working in his chest. Speaker Townsend: Yeah, I mean, and they're just testing it, but I mean, isn't it incredible to see the lung just— Speaker 1: Expand like that, wow. Speaker 2: It's so touching just to see his gratitude and appreciation, and it gave me chills listening to him talk. Speaker Townsend: And he and his wife married for so long, I mean, just very touching, I mean—just—it's going to change a lot of lives. Speaker 2: That's wonderful news. Well, thanks for sharing that Tracy.