March 2, 2017 at 8:35 PM For patients affected by lung diseases such as pulmonary fibrosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, cystic fibrosis and others, cures for their diseases are incredibly rare, if not nonexistent. “We really have no option, but to offer them a lung transplantation,” says Vibha Lama, M.D., a professor of internal medicine and associate chief of basic and translational research at Michigan Medicine’s Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine.

Doctors typically rush to complete a transplant within about six hours of the lungs being taken from a donor, with time being of the essence because the tissue starts to break down. A new technique could help nearly double the precious few hours surgeons have to carry out lung transplants, raising hopes for saving more lives, said a study released Friday. Doctors typically rush to complete a transplant within about six hours of the lungs being taken from a donor, with time be

Researchers at the University of Michigan have transplanted lab-grown mini lungs into immunosuppressed mice where the structures were able to survive, grow and mature. “In many ways, the transplanted mini lungs were indistinguishable from human adult tissue,” says senior study author Jason Spence, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Internal Medicine and the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology at the U-M Medical School. The findings were published in eLif

Recent lung transplant recipients will spend recovery holding their breath after UPMC researchers linked a common complication with a shorter lifespan. This April, researchers at UPMC published in the journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery that nearly a third of lung transplant recipients experience atrial arrhythmia — a condition in which the heart doesn’t beat with the proper rhythm — following the transplant operation. The researchers also found, after correcting f