Uncontrolled donation after circulatory death (uDCD) and lung transplantation (LTx) have a long story together. In fact, two major milestones in LTx history were achieved by using lung grafts from uDCD:the first LTx performed by Dr. Hardy in 1963 (1) 1. HARDY, J.D. ∙ WEBB, W.R. ∙ DALTON, Jr., M.L. ... LUNG HOMOTRANSPLANTATION IN MAN JAMA. 1963 Dec 21; 186 :1065-1074 Google Scholar , and the first lung donor evaluated and implanted using ex vivo lung perfusion (EVLP) performed by Steen in 2001 (2) 2. Steen, S. ∙ Sjöberg, T. ∙ Pierre, L. ... Transplantation of lungs from a non-heart-beating donor Lancet. 2001; 357 :825-829 Google Scholar . Despite these auspicious events, uDCD lung utilization has not been widely implemented worldwide. In fact, uDCD lung donation programs are quite rare around the world for several reasons, including ethical and legal framework hindrances, logistical burdens, as well as the uncertainty that naturally comes with the uncontrolled donation scenario.
Cruz et al. (Sun,) studied this question.