Association of cardiac disease with the risk of post-lung transplantation mortality in Chinese recipients aged over 65 years

Abstract

The current organ allocation rules prioritize elderly and urgent patients on the lung transplantation (LT) waiting list. A steady increase in the threshold at which age is taken into consideration for LT has been observed. This retrospective cohort study recruited 166 lung transplant recipients aged ≥ 65 years between January 2016 and October 2020 in the largest LT center in China. In the cohort, subgroups of patients aged 65–70 years (111 recipients, group 65–70) and ≥ 70 years (55 recipients, group ≥ 70) were included. Group D restrictive lung disease was the main indication of a lung transplant in recipients over 65 years. A significantly higher percentage of coronary artery stenosis was observed in the group ≥ 70 (30.9% vs. 14.4% in group 65–70, P = 0.014). ECMO bridging to LT was performed in 5.4% (group 65–70) and 7.3% (group ≥ 70) of patients. Kaplan–Meier estimates showed that recipients with cardiac abnormalities had a significantly increased risk of mortality. After adjusting for potential confounders, cardiac abnormality was shown to be independently associated with the increased risk of post-LT mortality (HR 6.37, P = 0.0060). Our result showed that LT can be performed in candidates with an advanced age and can provide life-extending benefits.

Keywords

cardiac disease / mortality / aged population / lung transplantation

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Compliance with ethics guidelines

Guohui Jiao, Shugao Ye, Ji Zhang, Bo Wu, Dong Wei, Dong Liu, Feng Liu, Chunxiao Hu, and Jingyu Chen declare that they have no conflict of interest. All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000. Informed consent was obtained from all patients for being included in the study.

Electronic Supplementary Material

Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11684-022-0937-y and is accessible for authorized users.

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