[The first 12 years of Hungarian lung transplantation]

12 years have passed since the first Hungarian patient went through lung transplantation. A small but dedicated group of clinicians work to make lung transplantation an easily accessible, accepted therapy for Hungarian patients. Transplantation is recommended for patients suffering from end stage vascular or parenchymal diseases of the lung after conservative therapies are proven unsuccessful. Lung transplantation as a surgical intervention is currently not available in Hungary. In the past 12 years 64 Hungarian patients were transplanted at the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Medical University of Vienna, in Austria by the Vienna Lung Transplant Group led by Prof. Walter Klepetko. Our patients went through lung transplantation for the following indications: cystic fibrosis (22), idiopathic lung fibrosis (18), primer pulmonary hypertonia (8), lymphangioleimyomatosis (5), emphysema (4) and other (7). The 64 patients altogether went through 68 transplantation procedures. In 4 cases re-transplantation was necessary. The surgery techniques employed were as follows: bilateral lung transplantation (33), bilateral lobar transplantation (18), single lung transplantation (13), heart-lung transplantation (2) and split-lung transplantation (2). Bilateral living-donor lung lobar transplantation was performed in one case. The mean age of patients at the time of surgery was 33.3 years (between age 14 and 58). 48 of the 64 patients are still alive.