A war veteran from Iraq died after receiving cancerous lungs from heavy smoker in a transplant.

A corporal in Queen’s Royal Lancers, Mattew Millington, 31, had the surgery to save him from n incurable respiratory condition.

He underwent double transplant surgery in April 2007 at Papworth hospital, in Cambridge, but less than a year later it was discovered by doctors that a tumor existed in the new lungs, and despite radiotherapy, Millington died in February 2008.

It was revealed by an analysis that he had been transplanted with lungs of a donor who smoked 30 to 50 roll-up cigarettes a day.

The immuno-suppressive drugs prescribed at Papworth to facilitate Millington’s body accept the lungs helped the cancer to spread.

His wife, Siobhan Millington, informed an inquest held last week that soon after the operations her husband said “his lungs felt like deflated balloons”.

A spokeswoman from a leading cardiothoracic hospital, told that it was not a new practice to use smoker’s lungs, adding that all organs are “rigorously screened” before carrying out a transplant.

Last year 146 lung transplants were conducted in the UK, and 84 people died while waiting on the transplant list, she added. "If we had a policy saying we did not use the lungs of those who smoked, then the number of lung transplants would have been significantly lower."