Being admitted to the transplant centre

You will be told when to stop eating and drinking. It’s very important that your stomach is empty before the operation. Having an empty stomach helps reduce the risk of vomiting that might cause damage to your lungs when you are asleep.

If you have had any infections, surgery or blood transfusions in the previous 3 months, please tell the team. Blood tests will be taken, and your pulse, blood pressure and temperature will be checked.

You may need other tests as well, for example a heart tracing (electrocardiogram – ECG) or chest X-ray.

If the lung transplant team think that you may not be fit enough for a lung transplant operation, they will discuss this with you.

The anaesthetist will check that you’re fit enough for a general anaesthetic. A general anaesthetic means that you will be completely asleep during the operation. The anaesthetist will tell you about the drips and tubes that you will need, and the benefits and risks of these. They’ll also tell you how your pain will be controlled after the operation. If you’ve had any problems with anaesthetics before, it’s important that you tell them. If members of your family have had serious reactions to anaesthetics, please tell your anaesthetist.

Your transplant team will speak to you in detail about the benefits and risks of having a lung transplant. The transplant team will be able to tell you some medical information about your deceased donor, including possible health risks.

Every donor and every lung is different. Some donated lungs are healthier than others. Your transplant team will discuss this with you.

Learn about how the health of your donor can affect the donated lung

The surgical team will confirm the information that has been previously given about on how and where the incisions (cuts) will be made.

Learn more about lung transplant surgery

If your blood or other tests detect that you have a new, serious health problem, the transplant may be too risky to do.

Sometimes the tests can raise concerns about cancer or serious infection in the donor that weren’t known about at the time that the lung offer was accepted.

Surgeons inspect the lung in the donor to check that it is safe enough to use. Sometimes lungs cannot be used.

Possible problems include scars on the lung, lumps, infections, or damage to the lung.

Even though a lung transplant is a priority operation, if there are sudden life-threatening emergencies in other patients, they may need to be taken to theatre before you. If these operations take a long time, the lung meant for you might no longer be safe to transplant into you.

This very rarely happens in the UK. Your transplant team will be doing everything they can to get your lung transplant done, but sometimes this is not possible. The lung transplant team will explain in detail why this happened and what your options are.

Some donors have not been diagnosed as dead at the time that you are called into hospital (DCD – donation after circulatory death donors). These donors are expected to die within hours of their treatment being stopped, and so an organ retrieval team is standing by in the donor's hospital at the time of treatment withdrawal. Sometimes, these donors take many hours or even days to die.  In these circumstances, it is not possible for the retrieval team to stay on site indefinitely.

There are also occasions where a donor has reached the end of their life and is still receiving life-sustaining treatment. The retrieval team is alerted, but sometimes the donor becomes unstable and dies before the retrieval team arrives at the donor hospital. This may mean that the organs become unusable.

Another reason is that circumstances for the donor family may change and they may choose to withdraw their consent/authorisation before the donor is moved to the operating theatre.  While this is rare, we will respect the decisions of the donor family.