Immunosuppressive therapy in lung transplantation: state of the art

The coming of age of lung transplantation is accompanied by an immunosuppressive armamentarium that has been brought forward from other transplant indications. Widely employed on the basis of few small randomized studies, and mostly single-center experience or empirical expert knowledge, anti-rejection therapeutic strategies in pulmonary transplantation have hardly been rigorously evaluated in large-scale prospective international trials. This review compiles the available findings on the use of current immunosuppressants in clinical lung transplantation, accentuating high level-of-evidence study results. Reporting on recent meeting and registry data, and assembling ongoing relevant trials from international databases, this article serves as an update on the state of the art of immunosuppression in lung transplantation.