What To Expect Before a Lung Transplant

If you're accepted into a medical center's transplant program, you'll be placed on the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network's (OPTN's) national waiting list. Your transplant team will work with you to make sure you're ready for the transplant if a donor lung becomes available.

 

Waiting for a donor lung can be frustrating. However, you can do several things to prepare.

 

While you wait for a lung, you may feel worried, scared, anxious, or depressed. These feelings are normal in this situation. Talk to your health care team about how you feel. They can offer suggestions for coping with your emotions. Family and friends also can offer support.

 

When a Donor Lung Becomes Available

 

OPTN matches a donor's lungs to a recipient based on need. OPTN will consider how severe a person's disease is and how quickly it's worsening. OPTN also will consider whether the transplant will improve the recipient's chances of survival, and by how much.

 

Organs are matched for blood type and the size of the donor lung and the recipient.

 

If OPTN and your transplant center think they have a good match for you, the center will call you and ask you to come in as soon as possible.

 

Once you arrive, your team will do tests to make sure you're healthy enough to have the surgery and that the lung is a good match. If you're healthy enough and the lung is a good match, the team will prepare you for surgery.

 

 

"Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will."

 

What To Expect During a Lung Transplant

Just before the surgery, you will get general anesthesia. The term "anesthesia" refers to a loss of feeling and awareness. With general anesthesia, you will be asleep during the surgery and not feel any pain.

 

Once you're asleep, your doctors will make a small incision in your chest, and insert a central venous catheter into a vein. This tube allows easy access to your bloodstream. Doctors use it to deliver fluids and medicines to your body.

 

Your doctors also will insert a tube in your mouth and down your windpipe to help you breathe. They also will insert a tube in your nose and down to your stomach to drain contents from your stomach. A catheter will be used to keep your bladder empty.

 

The surgeon will make a cut in your chest to open it. He or she will then cut the main airway to your diseased lung and the blood vessels connecting your lung to your heart.

 

The surgeon will remove your diseased lung and place the donor organ in your chest. Then the surgeon will connect the main airway of the donor lung to your airway and its blood vessels to those of your heart.

 

Lung Transplant

 

The illustration shows the process of a lung transplant. In figure A, the airway and blood vessels between a recipient’s diseased right lung and heart are cut. In figure B, a healthy donor lung is stitched to the recipient’s blood vessels and airway.

 

If you're having a double-lung transplant, you may be connected to a heart-lung bypass machine. This machine takes over for your heart and pumps oxygen-rich blood to your body. During the surgery, the surgeon will remove your diseased lungs, one at a time, and replace them with the donor lungs.

 

A single-lung transplant usually takes 4 to 8 hours. A double-lung transplant usually takes 6 to 12 hours.

 

Some people may need a heart-lung transplant. A heart-lung transplant is surgery in which both the heart and lung(s) are replaced with healthy organs from a deceased donor. For this surgery, you're connected to a heart-lung bypass machine.