This is a good little monograph on lung transplantation; it is largely concerned with technical considerations of "how to do it" and how to evaluate what has been done in the laboratory. The authors make no attempt to probe the mysteries of immunity and rejection beyond mention of conventional techniques for immunosuppression. One chapter presents a concise summary of the limited experience with pulmonary allotransplantation in man, experience which has been uniformly discouraging.
The conflicting evidence for the possibility of spontaneous respiration with complete bilateral pulmonary denervation is well discussed. Majority opinion is that spontaneous respiration is not possible if both lungs are grafted or denervated, or lung grafting and contralateral pneumonectomy are performed simultaneously. If an interval exists between denervation or grafting of one lung, and removal or denervation of the other, long-term survival is possible.
Lower and his colleagues, as noted by the authors, obtained two five-day survivors