Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who was elected to be Pope Francis Wednesday, March 13, only has one lung, according to news reports.
The 76-year-old from Buenos Aires needed to have his other lung removed as a teenager because of an infection, the Associated Press reported:
Bergoglio has slowed a bit with age and is feeling the effects of having a lung removed due to infection when he was a teenager -- two strikes against him at a time when many Vatican-watchers say the next pope should be relatively young and strong.
But in general, only having one lung shouldn't really hinder health at all, said Dr. Sandhya Khurana, M.D., an associate professor of medicine and a pulmonologist at the University of Rochester Medical Center, who is not the pope's doctor.
"If you have normal lungs, then that's certainly possible to just live with one lung and we get proof of that on a regular basis because of people who have lost a lung through surgery, for an infection, or cancer," Khurana told HuffPost. As long as "they have normal breathing ... and normal lung function, they seem to do OK."
A big factor in the respiratory health of someone with only one lung is the condition of the lung that is still in the body, she said. If a person was a smoker or had a diseased lung to begin with, then he or she won't tolerate the removal of a lung as well. But if the person is healthy, then that won't be generally be a limitation.
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