Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 15, 2026
Lung Rapid Recovery Procurement Combined with Abdominal Normothermic Regional Perfusion in Controlled Donation after Circulatory Death
Published on: August 15, 2022
Donor cause of death and mid-term survival in lung transplantation
J Saravana Ganesh1, Chris A Rogers, Nicholas R Banner
1Clinical Effectiveness Unit, The Royal College of Surgeons of England, London.
Background:
The influence of donor cause of death (DCD) on survival after lung transplantation (LTx) is uncertain. This was investigated using data from a national prospective cohort study of adult single and bilateral LTx undertaken between July 1995 and June 2002.
Methods:
DCD was categorized a priori into vascular and tumor (V), traumatic (T), hypoxic brain damage (H) and infective (I) causes. All T donor deaths were the result of blunt trauma. Risk factors for early (30 days), late (30 days to 5 years) and overall (5 years) mortality were identified using Cox regression analysis.
Results:
Of 580 eligible transplants, DCDs were classified as V (n = 372), T (n = 153), H (n = 38) and I (n = 17). V donors were older (median 42 years) than the others (medians < 27 years) (p < 0.001). T donors were more likely to be of male gender (p < 0.001). Two hundred fifty-nine patients died within 5 years of surgery. The median follow-up time of survivors was 37 months. Unadjusted 5-year Kaplan-Meier survival rates did not vary with DCD (p = 0.6). Cox analysis identified donor age group, recipient diagnosis, pre-operative recipient ventilation, donor-recipient size mismatch, donor-recipient blood group variance, cytomegalovirus (CMV) mismatch and recipient creatinine clearance as predictors of mortality. After adjustment for these risk factors, DCD was not identified as a predictor of early (p = 0.2), late (p = 0.5) or overall mortality (p = 0.4) in LTx recipients.
Conclusion:
We found that DCD did not affect mid-term survival after LTx.
