Medium-term outcome after lung transplantation is comparable between brain-dead and cardiac-dead donors

Donation after cardiac death (DCD) to overcome the donor organ shortage is now moving into the clinical setting, but the medium-term outcome after DCD lung transplantation (LTx) remains largely unknown.

In this retrospective study, DCD LTx recipients (n = 21) were compared with a cohort of donation-after-brain-death (DBD) LTx recipients (n = 154) transplanted between February 2007 and July 2010. Immediate (post)operative outcome was evaluated by assessing need for peri-operative extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), time to extubation, hospital discharge and primary graft dysfunction (PGD) within the first 48 hours. Survival, incidence of bronchiolitis obliterans syndrome (BOS), acute rejection (AR) and inflammatory markers in blood and in bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) were assessed and compared over a median follow-up of 327 days for DCD and 531 days for DBD, showing no statistically significant difference (NS).

There were no differences between groups with regard to patient characteristics except for a higher number of patients transplanted for obliterative bronchiolitis in the DCD group (4 of 21 vs 7 of 154; p < 0.05). In the DCD group, 2 of 21 patients died, vs 23 of 154 patients in the DBD group (NS). Actuarial survival rates at 6 months, 1 year and 3 years are 95%, 95% and 71% for the DCD group and 96%, 91% and 75% for the DBD group (NS). Three patients (14%) in the DCD group developed BOS vs 15 patients (10%) in the DBD group (NS). Survival and freedom from BOS were not different between the groups. AR, inflammatory markers and immediate (post)operative outcome also did not differ.

In our experience, both early- and medium-term outcome in DCD lung recipients is comparable to that of DBD lung recipients. Use of lungs recovered from controlled donors after cardiac death is a safe option for expansion of the donor pool.