Norway’s Crown Princess Mette-Marit placed on a lung transplant list

OSLO, Norway (AP) — Norway’s Crown Princess Mette-Marit has been placed on a lung transplant list, Norway’s Royal Court said in a statement.

Mette-Marit, 52, was diagnosed in 2018 with pulmonary fibrosis, a progressive disease that damages and scars lung tissue. It can cause serious breathing problems, and there is no known cure.

She will suspend her official duties and a new medical update will only be provided after the lung transplant has taken place, the statement said Friday. After discharge from the hospital, “there will be a longer period of rehabilitation and training” during which “there will initially be no updates.”

“The Crown Princess has had a significant worsening of her pulmonary fibrosis over the past six months. We see in the pictures that much more scar tissue has developed over the past year,” lung specialist Are Holm at Oslo’s University Hospital is quoted by Norway’s public broadcaster NRK as saying.

“The rule of thumb for who should be put on the list for lung transplantation is that the patient should be so sick with lung disease that we have reason to believe that the patient only has one year left to live,” he added.

Holm explained that the hospital has guidelines for prioritizing people on the waiting list and said it wasn’t possible to predict when she would be able to undergo the transplant, depending on when a “suitable organ becomes available.” He also said there were currently short waiting times and that they “follow protocol exactly in this case.”

Mette-Marit apologized in February for the situation she put the royal family in as she faced scrutiny over her contact with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, part of a broader apology for all those she has “disappointed.”

Crown Princess Mette-Marit’s communications and contacts with Epstein have put her in the spotlight, adding to the embarrassment of the royals just as her son, Marius Borg Høiby, went on trial in Oslo in February for multiple offenses, including charges of rape.

Høiby, 29, is the eldest son of Crown Princess Mette-Marit from a previous relationship and has no royal title or official duties.