Since 1990, transplants of lungs have been carried out at the hospital in Großhadern. On July 2, 2019, the Munich Lung Transplant Group (MLTG) team reached a milestone. Nikolaus Kneidinger, head of pneumology program and DZL Principal Investigator, announced the thousandth lung transplantation!
Excellent cooperation over many years is the precondition for this, says the Head of the MLTG, Dr. med. Christian Schneider. Furthermore, Dr. Sebastian Michel, Dr. Michael Irlbeck and Dr. Eike Speck are representing the entire team.
Overall, the transplantations at the MLTG are developing extremely dynamically with steady, annual increases. In 2018, the team in Großhadern transplanted over 100 donor lungs. The selected patients have better chances of survival after transplantation. The aim for the future and the subject of research is therefore to identify suitable patients even more precisely and to further improve aftercare.
A particular challenge for the medical profession is chronic lung allograft dysfunction (CLAD). There, the lung tissue scars and stiffs, pulmonary function decreases. Little is known about the development of this most important of all long-term complications. The team of the Munich Lung Transplant Group therefore wants to explore more intensively how CLAD develops and how it can be treated.