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Dr. Bremner describes the best candidate for a lung transplant.
Dr. Bremner:
The patients who are candidates for lung transplant are those who have, what we call, end-stage lung disease. So these are patients that are dying from their lungs which have been destroyed from some sort of disease process.
And the most common causes of those or most common diseases that cause these end-stage lung diseases are things like COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder) or emphysema, which may or may not be related to smoking. Cystic fibrosis, which is an inherited disease, which causes chronic infections of the lungs. Bronchiectasis, which is similar to cystic fibrosis, and then a big category of patients are those who are what’s called pulmonary fibrosis where there is a scarring process of the lung, and there’s a number of things that can cause that.
The other larger group is those that have high blood pressure in the lungs, something that we call pulmonary hypertension and we actually have much better drugs now to control that, so that group of patients that require transplantation is becoming smaller with time.
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.