title: "Every organ, every time" attitude teamed up with SoftMD results in successful lung transplant from a 72-year-old donor.
abstract: Since 1998, lung transplants have increased almost 75%, making lung transplant the fastest growing form of organ transplant in the United States. However, the supply of transplantable lungs continues to fall short of the demand. Strategies for expanding the lung donor pool by increasing the number of older donor lungs used has been effective, although these donors do not meet typical clinical selection criteria based on age. In these older donors, effective communication of in-depth donor information is necessary to place and transplant lungs successfully. The following case study illustrates how an "every organ, every time" attitude combined with a technique to communicate clinical information resulted in the successful transplant of 72-year-old donor lungs into a bilateral lung recipient. Since the case outlined in this study, the organ procurement organization has successfully recovered and transplanted an additional 2 lungs from a 74-year-old and 1 lung from a 76-year-old, 2 of the oldest lung donors in the United States. This case demonstrates that although many older donor lungs are deemed unsuitable by clinical selection criteria, an extended criteria population offers an untapped resource for donor organs.
authors.affiliation: The Center for Donation and Transplant, Albany, NY, USA. byork@cdtny.org
authors.forename: Barbara
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: York
authors.forename: Brian
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Mann
authors.forename: Cathy
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Jones
authors.forename: Jeffrey P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Orlowski
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D016040:Lung Transplantation; D012042:Registries; D012984:Software; D014019:Tissue Donors; D009927:Tissue and Organ Procurement / Q000379:methods*; D014584:User-Computer Interface