Bromont (Canada) (AFP)

"We have proven - and this is a very important point - that it is possible to do it without danger", congratulates AFP Dr. Shaf Keshavjee, who has worked with a technical team for two years to achieve this flight.

In the dead of night, the drone traveled 1.2 kilometers in just under ten minutes across the skies of the Canadian metropolis, taking off from the Toronto Western Hospital and landing on the roof of the General Hospital.

The lungs were then successfully transplanted into a patient in his sixties with pulmonary fibrosis.

Lungs about to be transported by drone for subsequent transplantation, in Toronto, Canada, end of September 2021 Jason van Bruggen Unither Bioelectronique / AFP

The drone transport was done via a refrigerated container "which maintains the thermal parameters of the organ" so that the latter is "viable for transplantation".

"I think that drone technologies have immense potential for it to become a standard in terms of healthcare," explains Mikaël Cardinal, vice-president at Unither Bioelectronics, the biotechnology company that carried out the flight.

The latter, a subsidiary of the American company United Therapeutics, is established in Quebec.

The device traversed the "urban and complex" environment of downtown Toronto in an automated fashion, with human supervision.

"The challenge now is to adapt this technology to make it accessible to patients around the world", adds Dr. Keshavjee, specialist in lung transplantation, who recalls that the lung is "the most fragile of all organs" to preserve and protect. to carry.

A drone used to transport lungs before a transplant in a hospital in Toronto, Canada, at the end of September Jason van Bruggen Unither Bioelectronique / AFP

Time is the most critical constraint for organ transport.

Experience shows that drone delivery technology, already operational for packages purchased online in some countries, could actually be used to improve the current organ transport system and reduce its cost.

In April 2019, a drone made a similar flight by delivering a kidney to a hospital in Maryland, United States.

© 2021 AFP