Use of drug intoxicated donors for lung transplant: Impact on survival outcomes.

INTRODUCTION: The number of increasing deaths due to the opioid epidemic has led to a potential greater supply of organ donors. There is hesitancy to use drug intoxicated donors, and we evaluated their impact on post-transplant survival.

BACKGROUND: Patients ≥18 years of age undergoing lung transplantation and donors from whom at least one organ was donated between January 2005 and March 2015 were selected from the United Network of Organ Sharing database. Baseline characteristics and post-transplant survival were compared between drug intoxicated and all other donors.

RESULTS: The utilization of drug intoxicated donors increased from 1.86% in 2005 to 6.23% in 2014. The 2 study groups had similar characteristics including age, gender, and Lung Allocation Score. As compared to all other donors, drug intoxicated donors were younger (29.1 ± 9.4 vs 34.6 ± 13.4 years, P < .0001), less likely to be male (52% vs 61%, P < .0001), and had a greater smoking history (14% vs 11%, P .04). There was no difference in post-lung transplant survival at 1, 3, and 5 years between drug intoxicated donors (85%, 64%, and 47%) and non-drug intoxicated donors (83%, 65%, and 51%).

CONCLUSION: Transplantation utilizing drug intoxicated donor lungs has significantly increased over the past decade without significantly impacting post-transplant survival.