Historical Developments that Facilitated Lung Transplantation

The first documented attempts of transplantation of the lung involved feline heterotopic en-bloc heart-lung into the neck by Alexis Carrel in 1907. In August 1968, Denton Cooley performed the first heart-lung transplantation in Houston, Texas, in a two-month-old infant with a complete atrioventricular canal defect and concomitant pulmonary hypertension. To better understand the factors contributing to bronchial anastomotic dehiscence, investigators at the University of Toronto performed a series of studies using a canine model of lung transplantation. The target of these investigations was to understand the effects of immunosuppression and ischemia on healing of the bronchial anastomosis. Vaughn Starnes and colleagues at the University of Stanford in late 1990 performed the first successful living-donor lobar transplantation, transplanting a mother’s right upper lobe into her 12-year-old daughter suffering from bronchopulmonary dysplasia.