Bizarre operation: Doctors save a man's life with breast implants. Here's what happened

In a unique medical case, the doctors came across a 34-year-old patient, identified as Davey Bauer, whose lungs were infected badly with a drug-resistant strain of bacteria and they could not be changed with a fresh pair of lungs in a single move.

Although the medical specialists working at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago had a machine which could have filled the space of the absent organs for some days while any remaining infection was cleared, there was no conventional way to fill the huge gap which would be created by the removal of lungs in the chest of the patient.

However, the surgeons came up with a never-heard solution for Bauer which was a pair of DD breast implants which were placed where his old lungs were once working.

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"Someone who is actively dying and was so sick like David, generally, will have no option of transplant, and they generally just die," stated chief thoracic surgeon Ankit Bharat, while speaking to CNN.

"We had to come up with a strategy to do something that we've never done before,” he added.

'Lungs started to liquefy because of infection'

Bauer was a chain smoker in his early 20s, but he switched to vaping in 2014, while considering it as a healthier alternative.

After he caught influenza in April, the doctors found his lungs in no state to cope and he easily caught a secondary infection, which was not getting cleared by any antibiotic.

Bauer, who was desperately short of breath, reached a St Louis hospital, where he was put on an ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) system.

The system took over the task of the lungs of balancing the gases of his blood.

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"Davey's lungs were so heavily infected that they started to liquefy," stated Northwestern Medicine pulmonologist Rade Tomic, while speaking to Science Alert.

"If you looked at his X-ray, there was nothing left – the lungs were completely filled with puss. When we received a call from Davey's medical team in St. Louis, we thought we could help him, but it was also very clear he wouldn't survive the transplant in his current condition. He needed to clear the infection before we could list him for transplant, but the only way to do that was to remove both lungs. This was unchartered territory for us, but our team knew if we couldn't help Davey, no one else could,” he added.

(With inputs from agencies)