NHS machine perfusion technique enables transplant of previously rejected donor lungs

A 62-year-old carpenter from Newport, Joe McConnell, has received a life-saving double-lung transplant using donor lungs that might otherwise have been rejected. The NHS pilot kept the lungs functioning in a specialised machine while they travelled between hospitals, allowing doctors to assess and improve their condition before the operation.

The technique, known as ex vivo machine perfusion, lets clinicians supply lungs with oxygenated blood and nutrients and monitor them for up to 12 hours. Last year, only 154 of 748 donors whose lungs were offered had them transplanted, while around 17 per cent of people on the lung transplant list die each year waiting; the new approach could potentially save up to 750 lives annually. McConnell had idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and relied on oxygen before the transplant at Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital; ten weeks later, he said he was “fighting fit”.