ABSTRACT
For a remarkable medical success story one has to look no further than the latter part of the 20th century and the emergence of heart-lung and lung transplantation for advanced cardiopulmonary disease. Following the first successful heart-lung transplantations at Stanford, California, U.S.A., in 1981 (1), until the end of 2002, over 20,000 heart-lung and lung transplantation procedures have now been performed worldwide and there are over 100 active transplantation centers (2).
