Lung Transplant Patients Not Given Anti-fungal Preventive Drugs Have Higher Death Risk: Study

In the first year following lung transplantation, anti-fungal drugs reduced mortality risk by half, stated a Mayo Clinic research involving 667 patients who received lung transplants from 2005 to 2018. The findings of the study are published in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society.

The study evaluated anti-fungal preventive medications' effectiveness in lung transplant recipients who are particularly susceptible to invasive fungal infections. These infections are linked to a nearly threefold increase in mortality for lung transplant recipients.

About Transplantation
Since the early times, the novel idea of transplanting tissues and other body parts from one organism to the other has captured the imagination of successive generations.

‘Significant reduction in mortality risk among lung transplant recipients who received anti-fungal medications is consistent with several prior studies in hematologic malignancies and bone marrow transplant patients. ’

Tweet it Now

Study Details

Data of adult patients who underwent a single or double lung transplant, or a concurrent heart-lung transplant, in the U.S. between Jan. 1, 2005, and Dec. 31, 2018, analyzed.

Of the 667 patients, 385, or 57.8%, received anti-fungal treatment and 282, or 42.3%, did not.

Itraconazole and voriconazole were the two most common anti-fungal preventive medications prescribed in the study.

Sixty-five patients died during the study.

All-cause death risk was significantly lower in those patients who received antifungal medications.

"Use of antifungal preventive medications in lung transplant patients is increasingly common, but no studies have established its efficacy," says Kelly Pennington, M.D., the study's first author. "This is the first study to demonstrate a mortality benefit associated with the use of antifungal prophylaxis in lung transplant patients. We still do not know which lung transplant patients receive the most benefit from these medications, and there are other unanswered questions that will require more research." Dr. Pennington is a Mayo Clinic Scholar in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine.

"In our retrospective study, the risk of death within the first year post-transplant is about twice as high in patients not receiving antifungal preventive treatment, compared with those receiving treatment," says Dr. Pennington.

The Lungs
The lungs are our organs of respiration. It is within these, that exchange of gases takes place.

Source-Medindia

Quiz on Organ Donation and Transplantation
See how much you know about organ donation and transplantation by taking this quiz.

Asia's 1st COVID Positive's Lung transplant Performed
At a Chennai hospital, doctors carried out a critical bilateral lung transplant and successfully replaced severely damaged lungs of a 48-year-old Coronavirus positive male patient.