Ex Vivo Lung Perfusion and Transplant: State of the Art and View to the Future

After the first clinical application of ex vivo lung perfusion in 2001, the technique has been used in many lung transplant centers worldwide. In addition, many modifications have been tested, leading to the development of various ex vivo lung perfusion systems and application protocols. Currently, the Lund protocol, the Toronto protocol, and Organ Care System Lung protocol are the clinically applied ex vivo lung perfusion protocols, based on the favorable results of the safety studies. Accordingly, the comparison among these EVLP systems and protocols should be an important research target, in order to provide the evidence based medical data that would recommend one protocol over the others. In this manuscript, the current experience with EVLP is reviewed and some molecular and clinical targets, that could be used to compare the various protocols of the technique, are introduced.