The quality control of lung transplantation involves many aspects, such as team building, selection of recipients, preoperative diagnosis and evaluation of recipients, maintenance of brain-dead donors, evaluation and acquisition of donors, surgical operation, postoperative management and postoperative follow-up. Precision management is the core concept of operation quality control. Only by normalizing the operation quality control of lung transplantation to provide basic guarantee for multi-team cooperation and development of lung transplantation management in the future, building a complete lung transplantation database to excavate data resources and improve the quality of transplantation, and comprehensively building a Chinese lung transplantation quality control system with multi-team participation and cooperation, can we improve the overall level of surgical diagnosis and treatment of lung transplantation in China.
Lung transplantation has developed in China for nearly half a century. The Wuxi lung transplant team completed our first lung transplantation on September 28, 2002. By the year of 2021, the total number of lung transplantation in China has been increased to 775, while 49 medical centers have been qualified to perform lung transplantation. During the past two decades, we vigorously promoted lung transplantation technique, cooperated and communicated with colleagues in relevant specialties. Thus, more and more patients with end-stage lung diseases could be evaluated and transplanted to save their lives, with the support of medical insurance and funds. The full-process monitoring and staged objective management, have been well established regarding to donor evaluation standards and acquisition procedures, the green channel for organ transportation, postoperative intensive care unit management, prevention of rejection and infection, as well as long-term follow-up of recipients. Based on the classical lung transplantation surgical techniques, technical breakthroughs have been made while the public’s acknowledgement of lung transplantation has been also enhanced. In the future, lung transplantation techniques will be increasingly challenged by new technologies and ethics, bringing diversified opportunities and challenges to the lung transplantation team collaboration.
Heart transplantation remains the most effective treatment for patients with end-stage heart failure. Over the past decade, significant advancements have been made in the field of heart transplant surgery. However, the enormous demand from heart failure patients and the severe shortage of available donor hearts continue to be major obstacles to the widespread application of heart transplantation. With the development of donor heart recovery, preservation, and evaluation techniques, the use of extended criteria donors and donation after circulatory death has increased. These technological advancements have expanded the safe ischemic time and geographic range for donor heart procurement, significantly enlarging the donor pool and driving a rapid increase in heart transplant cases. Concurrently, many new techniques have emerged in heart transplant surgery and perioperative management, particularly the rapid advancements in mechanical circulatory support and artificial intelligence, which hold the potential to revolutionize the field. This article reviews and discusses the current status and major surgical advancements in adult heart transplantation in the United States, aiming to provide insights and stimulate ongoing exploration and innovation in this field.