[General anesthesia for endobronchial laser therapy in a heart and lung transplant recipient]

The introduction of heart, lung and heart-and-lung transplants, only recently performed in Italy, has presented the anesthetist with the problem of the anesthesiological treatment of newly transplanted patients whose number will increase over time. For some time our unit has used general anesthesia using spontaneous breathing for endotracheal and endobronchial laser therapy. This solution was adopted in the case of a patient who had undergone a heart-lung transplant using an "a domino" technique some 90 days earlier. The authors discuss the results of the anesthesiological technique used taking into account the particular hemodynamic and respiratory characteristics of these patients.