Heart-Lung Transplantation

Heart-lung transplantation (HLT) frequency has decreased over the years due to the fact that most right-sided heart failure can recover without heart-lung transplantation. However, there is still a subset of the patient population suffering from end-stage cardiopulmonary disease who would benefit from combined heart-lung transplantation. The main indication for continues to be pulmonary hypertension due to idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension or secondary to congenital heart disease, accounting for 60%-70% of heart-lung transplants during the past 3 decades. This paper provided updated detailed illustrated technique for combined pediatric and adult heart-lung transplantation practiced at Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford. A total of, 185 of combined heart-lung transplants have performed at our institution since 1990.