The condition of the woman who underwent the first lung transplant operation in the State last week is continuing to improve, a hospital spokesman said last evening.
The 55-year-old woman was moved out of intensive care yesterday and into a high dependency unit in the national lung transplant unit at Dublin's Mater hospital.
She is now sitting up and talking to people, the spokesman confirmed. If her condition continues to improve she could be discharged later this month.
The woman underwent the operation in the early hours of Thursday morning last. She is understood to have been waiting a number of months for a suitable donor lung to become available.
She was suffering from emphysema, a condition in which the lungs lose their normal elasticity, leading to severe breathing problems.
It is the most common condition for which a lung transplant is required.
The transplant was undertaken by a multidisciplinary team led by Dr Jim Egan, consultant respiratory physician and lead transplant physician, and Mr Freddie Wood and Mr Jim McCarthy, cardiothoracic surgeons.
The operation, which took approximately three hours, was welcomed as a significant milestone both for the Mater hospital, which also carried out the State's first heart transplant in 1985, and for Irish medicine.