Received: 2015.01.25 Accepted: 2015.01.26 Published: 2015.02.03 Ex Vivo Lung Perfusion – State of the Art in Lung Donor Pool Expansion

Source of support: Self financing Lung transplantation remains the gold standard for patients with end-stage lung disease. Nevertheless, the number of suitable donor lungs for the increasing number of patients on the waiting list necessitates alterna-tive tools to expand the lung donor pool. Modern preservation and lung assessment techniques could contrib-ute to improved function in previously rejected lungs. Ex vivo lung perfusion (EVLP) already demonstrated its value in identification of transplantable grafts from the higher risk donor pool. Moreover, lungs from EVLP did not show significantly different postoperative results compared to standard criteria lungs. This could be explained by the reduction of the ischemia-reperfusion in-jury through EVLP application. The aim of this article is to review technical characteristics and the growing clinical EVLP experience with spe