Italian doctors have carried out the world's first lung transplant in an HIV-positive patient.
The operation took place earlier this week at Palermo's Mediterranean Institute for Transplants and High Specialisation Therapies (ISMETT).
The unidentified patient was said to be an adult who had terminal respiratory problems and a very short life expectancy.
He is making an "excellent" recovery from the operation, doctors said.
"The transplant did not meet with special difficulties," said the surgeon who led the operating team, Bruno Gridelli.
ISMETT pointed out that until now only liver, kidney and kidney-pancreas transplants have been carried out on HIV patients.
Since 2002, when a new programme for AIDS patients was introduced, 48 livers, two kidney-pancreases and one kidney have been given to HIV-positive patients.
ISMETT's expert on infection, Paolo Grosso, said the operations had been made possible by a new class of extremely effective infection drugs.
The head of Italy's National Transplant Centre, Alessandro Nanni Costa, called the Palermo doctors' achievement "an important event in the progress of the world of transplants".
