Adoption of a semi-elective lung transplantation practice by safely extending cold ischemic times

Lung transplantation is a complex surgical procedure performed by specialized teams. Practice changes to eliminate overnight lung transplants were implemented at our center and patient outcomes were evaluated.

Patient and donor organ selection were performed in the standard fashion. All donors with a crossclamp after 6 pm matched to any of our listed recipients-independent of their surgical complexity or risk-were kept in a temperature-controlled iceless cooler from procurement to recipient implant. All recipients had a 7 am in-room start. Data were prospectively collected and compared with a cohort of recipients from the previous fifteen months.

In total, 82 transplants were performed at a single academic institution between July 1, 2022, and January 7, 2024, 22% of which included allografts with extended ischemic times using the iceless cooler (n = 18) with a median average temperature of 6.81 °C. Median ischemic times were 13.9 (12.5-15.6) hours, more than twice the length of ischemic times in the standard group (n = 64, 6.8 [6.1-7.4] hours). Postoperative outcomes were similar between groups, including postoperative intensive care unit duration (12 vs 9 days in the standard group), length of stay (24 vs 20 days), primary graft dysfunction grade (17% vs 20%), postoperative extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (22% vs 20%), and 6-month survival (94% vs 91%).

Donor lungs preserved in an iceless cooler were successfully transplanted after extended cold ischemic times. Adoption of a semielective transplant strategy can be successfully implemented without compromising patient outcomes. Additional advantages may be gleaned through daytime transplantation with standard transplant surgical teams rather than overnight, on-call, teams.