The lungs of smokers should be used for transplants – because overall patients have a better survival chance, British surgeons say today.
Using smokers’ lungs means patients get a chance of a transplant rather than staying on a waiting list, according to the study from Birmingham, UK.
However the new lungs will last less long than those taken from healthy donors, according to the report in The Lancet.
Professor Robert Bonser, of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham, said to reject smokers’ lungs was "ill-advised".
The study showed that 40 per cent of lung transplants in the UK involve organs taken from smokers.
Professor Bonser studied the fate of some 2,181 adults who were on the lung transplant waiting list in the first decade of the century.
The study showed that those who removed smokers’ lungs were 21 per cent less likely to die than those on the waiting list. But they were 46 per cent more likely to die within three years of a transplant than those who received lungs from non-smoking donors.
Professor Bonser writes: "Although lungs from such donors are associated with worse outcomes, the individual probability of survival is greater if they are accepted than if they are declined and the patient chooses to wait for a potential transplant from a donor with a negative smoking history.
"This situation should be fully explained to and discussed with patients who are accepted for lung transplantation."
Leave a Reply