Lung transplants are increasingly used as treatment for end-stage lung diseases not amenable to other medical and surgical therapies. Lungs are allocated to adult and adolescent transplant candidates on the basis of age, geography, blood type compatibility, and the Lung Allocation Score, which reflects risk of wait-list mortality and probability of posttransplant survival. The overall median waiting time in 2012 was 4 months, and 65.3% of candidates underwent transplant within 1 year of listing; however, this proportion varied greatly by donation service area. Unadjusted median survival of lung transplant recipients was 5.3 years in 2012, and median survival conditional on living for 1 year posttransplant was 6.7 years. Among pediatric lung candidates in 2012, 32.1% were wait-listed for less than 1 year, 17.9% for 1 to less than 2 years, 16.7% for 2 to less than 4 years, and 33.3% for 4 or more years. Both graft and patient survival have continued to improve; survival rates for recipients aged 6-11 years are better than for younger recipients. Compared with recipients of other solid organ transplants, lung transplant recipients experienced the highest rates of rehospitalization for transplant complications: 43.7 per 100 patients in year 1 and 36.0 in year 2.
Keywords: End-stage lung diseases; Lung Allocation Score; lung transplant; organ allocation; transplant outcomes.
© Copyright 2013 The American Society of Transplantation and the American Society of Transplant Surgeons.