Heads up - this video is a quite graphic, so if you don't fancy seeing lungs the colour of car tyres then I suggest you look away now.
A video showing a set of blackened of lungs belonging to a heavy smoker has gone viral as people have hailed it the 'best anti-smoking advert ever'.
The lungs were removed by Doctor Chen Jingyu and the transplant team at Wuxi People's Hospital in the Jiangsu Province, China after the patient died and donated his organs.
Advert
However, Doctor Chen had no choice but to reject the donation due to the condition of the lungs.
The organs, which were reportedly donated by a man who had chain-smoked for 30 years, had turned black due to years of smoking and looked starkly different to the pink-colour of healthy lungs.
Doctor Chen, who is a top lung transplant surgeon and vice president of the facility, said the man had died aged just 52 and his organs had been donated.
But the team quickly realised they wouldn't be able to give these to anyone on the waiting list - citing a list of reasons including lung calcification, bullous lung disease and pulmonary emphysema, all of which are thought to have been caused by years of heavy tobacco use.
Sharing the video, Doctor Chen wrote: "Many smokers in this country have lungs which look like this.
Advert
"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.
"Look at these lungs - do you still have the courage to smoke?"
Speaking to local media he added: "The patient didn't undergo a CT scan before his death. He was declared brain dead, and his lungs were donated shortly after that.
Advert
"Initial oxygenation index tests were OK, but when we harvested the organs, we realised we wouldn't be able to use them.
"We Chinese love smoking. It would be impractical to say that we wouldn't accept the lungs of all smokers, but there are strict standards.
"These include lungs under 60 years of age in a patient who has only recently been declared medically dead; minor infections in the lungs and relatively clean chest X-rays are also acceptable.
Advert
"If the above conditions are met, we would consider transplanting the lungs."
A 2018 study for China's Centre for Disease Control and Prevention found that 26.6 percent of the country's population over the age of 15 smoke.
Featured Image Credit: AsiaWire
Topics: World News