Abstract
Lung transplantation has become a standard therapeutic procedure for patients with end-stage pulmonary diseases in the Czech Republic. There were 246 lung transplantations performed from December 1997 to the end of November 2014 at the 3rd Department of Surgery, 1st Faculty of Medicine, Charles Uni- versity in Prague and Motol University Hospital.
The most common indications for transplantation were chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in 39.4 % of patients, idiopathic pulmonary brosis in 28.9 % of patients and cystic brosis in 19.1 % of patients. The trans-bronchial biopsy is important for monitoring patients after lung transplantation.
The biopsy helps to detect acute cellular rejection, which was found within 63 % of our patients. Patients with the mild and moderate grade of acute cellular rejection got better after the anti-rejection therapy.
The severe rejection in three patients led to the shock change in lung and to respiratory failure. Humoral rejection cannot be determined based on biopsy only - the capillaritis and the linear binding of C4d fraction of the complement to the capillaries are inconsistent ndings and are not pathognomonic.
The classi cation of chronic rejection, which corresponds to the bronchiolitis obliterans, is limited for the common absence of bronchioli in the biopsy. Therefore, bronchiolitis obliterans in our study group was detected in only 3.7 % of patients.
Since the rst transplantation, 109 of our patients have survived (44.3 %). After transplantation about 90 % of patients live one year, about 70.9 % of patients live 3 years and 69.1 % live 5 years.
An autopsy at our department was performed in 79 cases. The most common causes of death were mycotic infections (aspergillosis, candidiasis), bacterial infections (Klebsiela, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Burkholderia cepacia) followed by sepsis and viral infection (CMV, varicella zoster).