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A lifesaving treatment
The world´s first successful lung transplantation was performed in Toronto in 1983 by Dr Joel Cooper and his team. Today lung transplantation is a lifesaving operation for patients suffering from end-stage lung diseases.
Even though there have been significant advances since the first transplant there are still major problems to be solved. The demand for acceptable lungs has risen constantly over the years yet the supply of acceptable donor organs has remained almost unchanged.
New methods to increase number of usable organs
As a consequence, lung centers around the world are intensively seeking new options to increase the availability of acceptable donor organs, including the use of lungs from older donors, lungs donated after cardiac death (DCD) and other sub-optimal /marginal lungs currently rejected for use. The function of most of these marginal lungs can now be assessed by the normothermic ex vivo lung perfusion (EVLP) technique referred to above, thus further expanding the pool of acceptable donor lungs.
The first lung to be successfully transplanted after EVLP was in Sweden in 2001 (Steen S et al, 2001). Since then, the concept has spread worldwide and the number of EVLP is rapidly increasing.
