Lung Transplant Evaluation, Is This Painful?

Dr. Bremner shares if lung transplant evaluations involve difficult, or painful, tests.

Dr. Bremner:
Lung transplant evaluation is fairly comprehensive and it takes time. It involves making sure that a) your lungs are bad enough to qualify you for needing a lung transplant, and then we will also want to make sure that you are going to do well after you have had a lung transplant. So the evaluation does take some time. We have to evaluate your heart, we have to evaluate your esophagus, make sure you have not got bad reflux disease, for example.

We evaluate also the psychosocial support of the patient. So the evaluation is fairly extensive, and all in all, there are some minor invasive procedures, but the evaluation process is not very painful. You do need to have patience as you go through your various tests.

Dr. Bremner, M.D., Ph.D.:
Ross M. Bremner, M.D., Ph.D., is surgical director of the Center for Thoracic Disease and chief of thoracic surgery at the Heart & Lung Institute, St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center. Dr. Bremner completed his medical school training in South Africa at the University of the Witwatersrand where he graduated magna cum laude and received the Harwood Nash Memorial medal for surgery. He then completed his general surgery training at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, during which time he also completed his Ph.D. Dr. Bremner then went on to complete his cardiothoracic training at USC after which he joined the faculty as assistant professor of cardiothoracic surgery and director of the Hastings Thoracic Oncology Laboratory.