Hope for lung transplant patients

British patients are to be offered lung transplants using tissue from live donors. The operations will initially be carried out by doctors at London’s Harefield Hospital.

British patients are to be offered lung transplants using tissue from live donors. The operations will initially be carried out by doctors at London’s Harefield Hospital. The technique involves taking the lower section of one lung from two living donors and transplanting them into a patient. Doctors believe it could help people with cystic fibrosis and other serious lung diseases to live longer. The procedure, which is called a living lobar lung transplant, was pioneered in the United States 14 years ago and has been carried out in the past in the UK. However, doctors have been unwilling to offer it widely to patients until now. The technique can only be used to help children or small adults. This is because the part of the lung taken from donors is not enough to fill the chest of a normal sized adult. Some doctors are reluctant to carry out the procedure because of its impact on donors. People who donate part of their lung have to undergo major surgery, which is always risky. They also stand to lose up to a fifth of their overall lung capacity. But doctors hope they can get around this problem and help people who are seriously ill. “I am very hopeful that if we are able to perform this procedure, having made sure we are not exposing donors to any excess risk, that it will offer hope to many many more people,” said Dr Martin Carby, who is based at Harefield. Heart transplant The announcement comes on the 25th anniversary of Britain’s first successful heart transplant. That operation was carried out by surgeons at Papworth Hospital in Cambridgeshire. The hospital has carried out over 1,000 heart transplants since. In recent years, doctors at Papworth have been leading the way in a new technique to help patients with heart failure. They are giving a growing number of patients mechanical hearts – a ventricular assist device (VAD) – to keep them alive while they wait for a heart transplant. “Some patients are so ill that they simply would not survive the wait for a transplant,” said consultant surgeon Steven Tsui. However, the technique is proving so successful that some patients don’t need a transplant. “After resting the patient’s much weakened heart, the patient’s own heart makes sufficient recovery to allow the VAD to be removed without needing a heart transplant,” he said. “This is an unpredictable but fantastic outcome for the patient.” (Source: BBC Health, June 2004)