Lung Transplant
If you have trouble breathing due to a serious respiratory condition or lung disease, University Health is here to help. As the longest running lung transplant program in Texas, we offer high-quality transplant care and are the leading program in South Texas.
Benefits of Lung Transplant
You can expect to live a healthier, longer life after a lung transplant. You will have more energy to do the things you love.
Your lung doctor (pulmonologist) may recommend a transplant if other treatments are no longer working.
A transplant may help treat conditions such as:
- Cystic fibrosis
- Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
- Interstitial lung disease
- Pulmonary hypertension
- Scleroderma
- Rheumatoid arthritis
- Lymphangioleiomyomatosis (LAM)
- Connective tissue disease
- Alpha-1 antitrypsin (AAT) deficiency
Type of Lung Transplants
We offer both single and double (bilateral) lung transplantations.
The Transplant Process
Your transplant patient journey at University Health will be similar to the following:
Your First Visit
Meet your transplant care team, including a pulmonologist (lung specialist), surgeon, dietitian, social worker and financial counselor, if needed. We’ll do a short walking test, review your health history and do a physical exam. Come prepared with a list of questions and a support person to help you remember everything you and your team discuss.
Evaluation Testing
You'll undergo thorough testing to determine if you are a candidate for a lung transplant. Your care team will order blood tests, routine screening exams, imaging and heart function exams.
Becoming a Candidate for Transplantation
The University Health Transplant Patient Selection Committee will review your health history and test results to determine if you are a candidate for transplant. Your transplant coordinator will notify you of the committee’s decision. If approved, you will be placed on the national transplant waitlist.
Lung Transplant Waiting List
At University Health, our lung transplant patients experience wait-times as short as two months. During this waiting period, you can participate in pre-transplant education classes and work closely with our multidisciplinary team in order to maintain your health as much as possible in preparation for your new lung.
Lung Transplant Surgery
A transplant team member will call you when a donor lung becomes available. You would then immediately come to University Hospital for final testing and preparation for surgery. A single lung transplant surgery takes between three and four hours, while a double lung transplant takes up to eight hours. Your surgeon will remove your damaged lung and attach your new lung to your blood vessels and airway.
After Lung Transplant Surgery
After lung transplant surgery, you will recover in the intensive care unit, where your family can visit you. You may spend a few days in ICU before being transferred to a regular room in the transplant care unit. The average hospital stay is three weeks after lung transplant.
A physical therapist will help you rehabilitate after surgery, and your care team will monitor you for organ rejection. Before you go home, we’ll walk you through your organ transplant manual, a complete guide to caring for your new lung(s). It contains all the information you’ll need to answer questions about medications, self-care, exercise, return to work and more. We’ll also schedule you for your first follow-up visit.
Why University Health for Lung Transplant
Our team has decades of experience in lung transplants. Since 1987, we’ve performed more than 850 lung transplants.
Some of the longest surviving lung transplant patients in the nation had their transplants at University Health. We emphasize "pre-habilitation" and conditioning your body in preparation for your lung transplant. We know that optimizing your health before your surgery is key to a longer-lasting, more successful transplant. We provide outpatient pulmonary conditioning to support you.
We also use advanced cooling technology — both portable and stationary — to support specialized temperature monitoring of organs, helping preserve organ quality throughout the transplant process.
Plus our lung recipients have some of the shortest waiting times in the country for transplantation.
High-Quality, Recognized Lung Care
We are recognized as a Center of Excellence for adult lung transplants by the following health plans and organizations:
- Aetna
- BlueCross BlueShield Association
- LifeTrac
- OptumHealth
Our Lung Transplant Milestones
- Transplantation of the first lung for the treatment of emphysema in North America
- First heart and double-lung transplant performed in San Antonio
- Transplantation of the first single lung for the treatment of pulmonary hypertension in the world
- Performed the first post-COVID-19 positive lung transplant in South and Central Texas.
