Surgeons at Vanderbilt University Medical Center successfully rehabilitated and transplanted a pair of lungs into a 62-year-old woman using advanced ex vivo lung perfusion (EVLP). The transplant involved sending donor lungs to a laboratory in Maryland (Lung Bioengineering) for perfusion before implantation at Vanderbilt.
Perfusion helped restore lungs that were slightly damaged, so they could be transplanted, said Matthew Bacchetta, M.D., associate professor of thoracic surgery at Vanderbilt who performed the transplant. “A lung needs certain systemic factors to allow for healing. The idea is that with EVLP, we provide the substrate that’s needed for that organ to get better.”