March 2025

PULMONARY

NORTHWESTERN MEDICINE PERFORMS HIGHEST NUMBER OF LUNG TRANSPLANTS IN THE U.S.


​Featuring: Ankit Bharat, MD, and Ambalavanan Arunachalam, MD

In 2024, Northwestern Medicine Canning Thoracic Institute’s Lung Transplant Program finished the year by performing 148 lung transplants, their highest volume for a single year since the program began 10 years ago. For the first time, Canning Thoracic Institute became the highest volume lung transplant center in the U.S. and achieved the shortest wait time for a lung transplant, with a median wait time of four days.
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“Since our lung transplant program launched 10 years ago, several innovations helped us reach these achievements for 2024. From performing the first COVID-19 lung transplants in the U.S., to starting a lung transplant program for select patients with advanced lung cancers, and replacing diseased lungs with breast implants to bridge patients to lung transplantation, we’re continuously thinking outside the box and ‘lungs in a fridge’ is another example,” says Ankit Bharat, MD, chief of Thoracic Surgery and director of Canning Thoracic Institute. “In 2024, we used ‘lungs in a box’ to repair the most […] donor lungs that weren’t initially usable at Northwestern Medicine, enabling us to achieve a record wait list time of only four days. And now, with controlled lung refrigeration, we can keep the lungs alive outside the human body for an extended period of time, giving us more time to prepare for transplantation and perform the surgery.”

“In 2024, we used ‘lungs in a box’ to repair the most […]  donor lungs that weren’t initially usable at Northwestern Medicine, enabling us to achieve a record wait list time of only four days. And now, with controlled lung refrigeration, we can keep the lungs alive outside the human body for an extended period of time, giving us more time to prepare for transplantation and perform the surgery.” – Ankit Bharat, MD

“With a combination of ‘lungs-in-a-box’ and ‘lungs-in-a-fridge’ technologies, we also now have the option for patients at any transplant center in the country or overseas who experience longer wait-times to dual list with us, and in 2024, patients traveled from places such as Germany, the United Kingdom and Columbia to receive a lung transplant at Northwestern Medicine,” says Ambalavanan Arunachalam, MD, pulmonologist and interim medical director of the Lung Transplant Program.

Since starting in 2014, the Lung Transplant Program has performed nearly 600 lung transplant procedures.

For more information about Northwestern Medicine, as well as advanced therapies, visit https://www.nm.org/conditions-and-care-areas/pulmonary/lung-transplant-program.
Ankit Bharat, MD, Chief of Thoracic Surgery in the Department of Surgery; the Harold L. and Margaret N. Method Professor of Surgery; Professor of Surgery (Thoracic Surgery), and of Medicine (Pulmonary and Critical Care)
​Ambalavanan Arunachalam, MD, Assistant Professor, Medicine (Pulmonary and Critical Care)

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