Clinical lung and heart/lung transplantationListing for lung transplantation: life expectancy and transplant effect, stratified by type of end-stage lung disease, the Eurotransplant experience
Section snippets
Methods
This study included all 1,208 adult patients (age ≥ 16 years) consecutively registered for first, lung-only transplantation on the Eurotransplant waiting list between January 1, 1990, and December 31, 1996. The treating transplant physician decided between single and double lung transplantation. The end-stage lung diseases were grouped into 6 types: cystic fibrosis, pulmonary fibrosis, emphysema, pulmonary hypertension, congenital heart disease, and other (Table I). All patients were considered
Results
The 2 most frequent types of end-stage lung disease in the cohort were emphysema (33%) and pulmonary fibrosis (27%) (Table I).
Discussion
Prolonging life for patients placed on the lung transplant waiting list requires their surviving until transplantation and surviving after transplantation (as long as possible). Our data from the Eurotransplant registry confirm that transplantation is the best treatment option for patients with end-stage lung disease, as we observed survival benefit of transplantation for all patients in our study—with the exception of the patients with congenital heart disease. The combined efforts of
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