Surgical Aspects of Lung Transplantation

The transplantation of thoracic organs was pioneered for hearts at Stanford University Hospital by Lower and Shumway in the early sixties. There were many obstacles to overcome and when this became accepted therapy, the stage was then set for developing lung transplantation. Reitz and Shumway developed the first technique for lung transplantation using the lungs attached to the heart as a single organ block. Joel Cooper at Toronto General Hospital developed a fundamentally different approach using singlelung or double-lung transplantation. Single-lung transplantation or bilateral sequential single-lung transplantation (double-lung transplant using the left and right lungs as separate organs) has become proven therapy for respiratory failure.