HEART AND LUNG GRAFTS HARVESTED EN-BLOC - OPERATIVE TECHNIQUE, UTILIZATION, AND RESULTS

Combined heart and lung transplantation has been shown to provide succ essful therapy for patients with end-stage heart and lung disease. The improved success of lung transplantation has resulted in increasing n umber of potential recipients and longer waiting times. Maximal utiliz ation of all three thoracic organs is no longer a casual goal but of u tmost necessity. We devised a new technique that improves operative vi sualization, decreases dissection time, and ensures excellent preserva tion of all three thoracic organs. Bench dissection after extraction o f this heart-lung block allows the thoracic and cardiac surgeons to ag ree on precise dissection of the left atrium and adequate pulmonary ve nous and atrial cuff. This technique has been used in 48 of our last 5 0 harvests with excellent results. Utilization of heart and lungs has been 93% and 74%, respectively.