ABSTRACT
The number of patients awaiting lung transplantation has steadily increased over the past decade as improvements in donor management, operative technique, organ preservation, immunosuppression, and postoperative care has made lung transplantation accepted therapy for end-stage lung disease. At the end of the year 2003, there were 3836 patients on the UNOS Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network lung transplantation waiting list, representing a 147% increase from the number in 1994. Despite the increase in demand, the number of cadaveric lung transplants performed each year has increased only 51% over the same decade, despite liberalizing the standard donor criteria and considering older and sometimes more marginal donors (1-3). With this disparity in mind, our group developed living lobar lung transplantation as an alternative to cadaveric lung transplantation (4,5).
