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New preservation temperature extends the lifespan of donor organ outside the body

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Reviewed by Emily Henderson, B.Sc.

Storing donor lungs for transplant at 10 degrees Celsius markedly increases the length of time the organ can live outside the body according to research led by a team of scientists at the Toronto Lung Transplant Program in the Ajmera Transplant Centre at the University Health Network (UHN).

The prospective multicenter, nonrandomized clinical trial study of 70 patients demonstrated that donor lungs remained healthy and viable for transplant up to four times longer compared to storage at the current standard of ice cooler preservation of around 4 degrees Celsius. Read more in News Medical Life Sciences.

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Cool Storage Could Keep Lungs Ready for Transplant Longer

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By Dennis Thompson, HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, April 24, 2023 (HealthDay News) — Storing donor lungs at cool — but not near freezing — temperatures can markedly increase the length of time the organs can live outside the human body, a new study suggests.

Lungs stored at 50 degrees Fahrenheit remain healthy and viable for transplant up to four times longer than those stored at the current standard temperature of 39 degrees, according to new clinical trial results. Read more in U.S. News & World Report.

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We didn’t give up hope: Emily’s fighting chance with her lung transplant

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By Veronica Giarla

Emily lights up every room she’s in with her giggles and confidence — not to mention her sparkly painted nails and glittery makeup. At 6 years old, she’s able to win people over with her bright smile and electric personality.

All this is made possible because Emily was given the gift of life — an organ donation in what seemed to be impossible circumstances. “It was during one family’s darkest hour that Emily was given the ability to continue to live,” shares Stephanie, Emily’s mom. Read the full story from Boston Children’s Hospital.

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Unpacking the emotional layers of transplant: guilt, gratitude, and grief

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The most complicated relationship you’ll have with a person you’ll never meet

By Christie Patient
This week, while my husband, Jonny, and I sat at home in isolation after our tests for COVID-19 were positive, I struggled to feel joy. My friend sent me a video of someone singing a popular emo anthem while holding a wet strawberry — its soggy leaves pasted to its bright red skin in a way that resembled the hairstyles of many of my millennial peers circa 2004. I have never related more to a piece of fruit.

The angst expressed in emo music — an emotional genre that came after hardcore punk and was the soundtrack for my pubescent years — still lives within me. And there’s nothing like being stuck at home with an infectious disease to bring angst to the surface. Read the full story in Pulmonary Fibrosis News.


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Spanish hospital pioneers new lung transplant approach

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MADRID, April 17 (Reuters) – A Spanish hospital has carried out a lung transplant using a pioneering technique with a robot and a new access route that no longer requires cutting through bone, experts said on Monday.

Surgeons at Vall d’Hebron hospital in Barcelona used a four-armed robot dubbed “Da Vinci” to cut a small section of the patient’s skin, fat and muscle to remove the damaged lung and insert a new one through an eight-centimetre (three-inch) incision below the sternum, just above the diaphragm.
Read the full story from Reuters.

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Short wait times, long-term survival in young children receiving lung transplant

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By Isabella Hornick

Children aged younger than 3 years receiving a lung transplant have different diagnoses, shorter wait times and comparable long-term survival to older patients, according to a study published inAnnals of the American Thoracic Society.

“Carefully selected infants and young children with end-stage lung and pulmonary vascular disease are appropriate candidates for lung transplantation and are likely underserved by current clinical practice,” Ernestina Melicoff, MD, assistant professor in the section of pediatric pulmonology at Baylor College of Medicine and medical director of the lung transplant program at Texas Children’s Hospital, and colleagues wrote. Read more in Healio.

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System repairs donor lungs for transplantation

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by Matt Batcheldor

Only 20% of donor lungs are in sufficient condition for transplantation, which means that many people die every day while waiting on the transplant list. Discovering new ways to increase the supply of donor lungs is an urgent problem and is desperately needed to save lives of patients with chronic lung disease.

A Vanderbilt team has discovered that donor lungs rejected for transplant can be repaired using cross-circulation with a xenogeneic (swine) host. Read more from the VUMC Reporter.

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Double Lung Transplants May Be Rare, but They Just Saved Two Lives

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Both recipients had Stage IV lung cancer and were given only weeks to live. Here’s why double lung transplants are so uncommon.

By Laura Schmidt
The stars aligned for two people with Stage IV lung cancer who received lifesaving double lung transplants after being told they had just weeks to live, CNN reports.

Albert Khoury, 54, of Chicago, was diagnosed with Stage I lung cancer in 2020 near the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. By July 2020, the cancer had reached Stage IV. He was told to consider all his options, including hospice care. Read more from Cancer Health.

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LAS system may not reflect risks for lung transplant patients

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Stratifying sarcoidosis by PH doesn’t fully show how it confers higher mortality risk

By Marisa Wexler, MS
The Lung Allocation Score (LAS) system, which is used to prioritize patients awaiting lung transplant, may not accurately reflect disease severity risks for people with pulmonary sarcoidosis, a new study reports.

Results showed that several factors accounted for in the LAS remain significant predictors of mortality for patients on the transplant wait list. This “suggests that the LAS system could be further optimized to lessen the disparity in candidate waitlist mortality,” the researchers wrote in the study, “Lung Transplantation Waitlist Mortality Among Sarcoidosis Patients by Lung Allocation Score Grouping,” which was published in Transplantation Proceedings. Read the full article in Sarcoidosis News.

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What the First Lung Delivered by Drone Means for Transplant Science

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Scientists document a groundbreaking flight to deliver a lung for transplant

As organ transplant science advances, its biggest hurdles are increasingly logistical ones—such as securing a flight and navigating through traffic fast enough to deliver an organ before it deteriorates.

Enter the drone, for which researchers recently documented a milestone test in Science Robotics. After hundreds of practice flights, their drone carried a human donor lung on a five-minute journey from the roof of Toronto Western Hospital to Toronto General Hospital for a successful transplant. The trip can take 25 minutes by road.
Read more in Scientific American.

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