10°C vs 4°C Lung Preservation RCT

Study Summary

Despite lung transplantation (LTx) being the most effective treatment for end-stage lung disease, its success rate is lower than that of other solid organ transplantations. Primary graft dysfunction (PGD) is the most common post-operative complication and a major factor in early mortality and morbidity, affecting \~25% of lung transplant patients. Induced by ischemia reperfusion, PGD represents a severe and acute lung injury that occurs within the first 72 hours after transplantation, and has a significant impact on short- and long-term outcomes, and a significant increase in treatment costs. Any intervention that reduces the risk of PGD will lead to major improvements in short- and long-term transplant outcomes and health care systems. One of the main strategies to reduce the risk and severity of post-transplant PGD is to improve pre-transplant donor lung preservation methods. In current practice, lung preservation is typically performed by cold flushing the organ with a specialized preservation solution, followed by subsequent hypothermic storage on ice (\~4°C). This method continues to be used and applied across different organ systems due to its simplicity and low cost. Using this method for the preservation of donor lungs, the current maximum accepted preservation times have been limited to approximately 6-8h. While the goal of hypothermic storage is to sustain cellular viability during ischemic time through reduced cellular metabolism, lower organ temperature has also been shown to progressively favor mitochondrial dysfunction. Therefore, the ideal temperature for donor organ preservation remains to be defined and should maintain a balance between avoidance of mitochondrial dysfunction and prevention of cellular exhaustion. In addition to that, safe and longer preservation times can lead to multiple advantages such as moving overnight transplants to daytime, more flexibility to transplant logistics, more time for proper donor to recipient matching etc. Build

Primary Outcome

PGD is graded on a scale of 0 to 3 based on ISHLT guidelines, where PGD Grade 3 indicates severe primary graft dysfunction.

Conditions Studied

Interventions

• DEVICE Lung transplantation after 10°C donor lung preservation
• DEVICE Lung transplantation after standard ice cooler donor lung preservation

Study Locations (17)