Lung Transplantation

Based on the statistics issued by the WHO, lung diseases are currently the 6th leading cause of death worldwide and the incidence and prevalence continue to increase. For patients with the most serious endstage lung diseases, such as COPD, the only curative therapy at the present time is lung transplantation, which is, however, only an option for an extremely select number of patients. 

With lung transplantation in particular, there is an increasing mismatch between organ recipients and organ donors, which leads to a progradient mortality of the patients on the waiting list.

A further challenge in lung transplantation is that only 20-30% of those organs on offer are suitable for a transplantation and that the lung has a relatively short ischemic time of 6-10h. In addition, in about 20% of lung transplantations, the ischemia/reperfusion damage still leads in part to life-threatening transplantation failure, whereby ultimately the 5-year survival rate after lung transplantation lies at an unsatisfactory 56%.