Simon Ashton was sat in his office in Merseyside when he received an unusual phone call from the Medical University of Vienna.
Could he organise an expedition to Mount Kilimanjaro within three months? Of course he could. Is a group of 24 people, plus 140 staff, possible? Yes, OK. Would it be a problem if the climbers were lung transplant patients, complete with their surgeons, doctors, psychologists and medical research equipment in tow? “We sat down and thought — can we really do this,” he recalled. “Then we said, ‘Yes we can’.”
As the director of Kilimanjaro Climbing Company Ltd, Mr Ashton, 45, is accustomed to taking groups up Africa’s highest peak. Yet despite the health risks and logistics involved in his latest brief, he set to work when Peter Jaksch, head of the university’s lung transplant programme, explained that he wanted to pull off “a true miracle”.
After training for six months before enduring a week of constant medical tests measuring spirometry (how well one can breathe) and freezing temperatures, eight lung transplant patients from across Europe climbed the 5,895-metre (19,341ft) Tanzanian mountain in June. Although they have chequered medical histories — ranging from cystic fibrosis to pulmonary hypertension — initial test results found they had better lungs than some of the doctors who made the ascent with them.
“I think that there are better lungs in transplant patients,” Dr Jaksch explained, “because they all had normal lung functions and the rest had, in some cases, reduced spirometry values. [Some of the doctors are smokers]”.
Advertisement
Dr Jaksch, who had been planning the trip for three years, added that “the lungs of the patients were working perfectly” and in most cases they had “better oxygen values than the control group”.
His patients were from Hungary, Austria, Romania, Slovakia and Greece and ranged from 23 to 63 years old. Despite two of them having to drop out of the climb at 400m because of muscle weakness, the others only suffered mild altitude sickness. Dr Jaksch described the experience as “one of the highlights of my life” and is finalising the analysis. He hopes to publish his findings in an academic paper.
One of the patients who reached the summit was Helmut Steigersdorfer, who had a lung transplant in 2002 because of his cystic fibrosis. Despite being a keen hiker, the 42-year-old computer worker from the city of Linz, midway between Vienna and Salzburg, said he found the trip difficult but the payoff was worth it.
“I always go to the mountains with my friends, and that feeling when you stand at the top and you can look around and see what you have done — that is the best feeling,” he said.
“Kilimanjaro was hard because it was very cold and dark. But we reached the summit at 6.30am and when the sun came out it was unbelievable. We were all crying.” He said of the results: “I feel like normal people, not sick people. I have no problems with the lungs, no problem with oxygen. I can do what normal people do.”
Advertisement
Another patient, Andreas Gappmayr, 45, of Salzburg, had a lung transplant in 2002 because of his cystic fibrosis. “I knew I was fit with this and I’m good with my new lung,” he said, “but I would not have taken the risk to do this without the doctors. They checked us all the time.” He added: “It’s very exciting for me that I’m maybe the same as other people without a transplant.”
Mr Ashton said that the expedition was planned to the last detail. Permission was sought so that a generator for the medical equipment could be taken up the mountain. Tests were also conducted to see how altitude affected the patients. “The fact that those guys have had a second chance in life and then gone to the actual summit is amazing,” he added.
Dr Jaksch hopes to make the trip an annual event.