| Abstract ： |
A number of illnesses may result in damage and failure of both the heart and lungs, complicating potential therapy for these conditions. Whereas end stage heart disease may be treated with increasing reliability by heart transplantation or, in the future, with possible mechanical replacement, end stage pulmonary disease will not be treatable by long term mechanical support. Thus, it has been recognized for many years that combined heart and lung transplantation may be the only feasible therapy for such patients. Sporadic experimental attempts at performing combined heart and lung transplantation have been reported since the 1940's. Notable among these was the work of Demikhov1), Webb and Howard2), Lower, Shumway and colleagues3), and Cooper and associates4). All of these studies used dogs for the experiments, and were inherently doomed to failure because of the severe difficulty the dog experiences after complete cardiopulmonary denervation, and its effect on breathing patterns5). With the use of baboons, Castaneda and colleagues6) first obtained long survival after autotransplantation of the combined heart and lung bloc. |
