Third-time lung transplant using extended criteria lungs.

Abstract

There is an increasing requirement for lung re-transplants (re-LTx) related to the bronchiolitis obliterans syndrome. Nevertheless, re-LTx, especially second-time re-LTx, poses the dilemma of appropriate allocation of a scarce donor lung resource versus the desire to optimize outcomes for an individual patient. Extended donors have been used to partially alleviate a scarce donor lung supply with satisfactory outcomes for primary lung transplant. However, the usefulness of the extended donors remains unknown, including donation-after-cardiac-death donors for re-LTx. This report describes a second-time re-LTx using significantly extended donor criteria lungs from a Maastricht category IV donation-after-cardiac-death donor with resultant good clinical outcomes.