San Diego

A 31-year-old San Diego woman, facing death from cystic fibrosis, has undergone a double-lung transplant at UC San Diego Medical Center.

The operation, the first in San Diego, was performed Sunday and recipient Theresa Steveley is doing well so far, the hospital reports. She was removed from a ventilator and was breathing on her own 24 hours after the six-hour surgery. She is expected to remain hospitalized for several weeks.

The operation was the 63rd double-lung transplant ever done, according to the International Society of Heart Transplantation Registry.

Steveley was in the last stages of cystic fibrosis, an inherited disease in which the lungs fill with thick secretions that make breathing difficult. Average life expectancy is 30 years.

The head of the transplant team, Dr. Stuart Jamieson, said it is not known whether Steveley’s new lungs also eventually might be afflicted with cystic fibrosis.

“But we feel that, since the disease took more than 25 years to manifest itself in a serious way, that at the very worst scenario you’d get another 25 years of life,” he said.