A milestone in second chances: Temple sets U.S. record in lung transplants

PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) -- Lung transplants across the U.S. have hit record highs in recent years. However, a local hospital has set its own milestone.

2025 was the busiest year yet for Temple Health's transplant team.

"Temple has now completed the most number of lung transplants ever in the history of the United States," says Dr. Rachel Criner, a Temple Health pulmonologist.

The team completed 179 transplants last year, well above the totals of 134 for 2024 and 111 for 2023.

Very few centers in the country even top 100 a year.

Dr. Criner points to several keys to Temple's success. The biggest is the "can-do" attitude of the whole team.

"We're not willing to say no from the beginning. We give every single patient a chance," Dr. Criner explains.

She says some centers have age cutoffs - Temple does not. Other centers also rule out patients who also have heart problems.

However, Temple's cardiac and lung surgeons will take on complex cases.

"They're doing transplant surgery and valve surgeries or transplant surgeries and CABG, which are cardiac surgeries," she says.

Another key is Ex Vivo Lung Perfusion, or EVLP, a technique first described by Leonardo DaVinci that makes more lungs available.

"With that device, we can make a lung that was a marginal donor into a high-quality donor lung," Dr. Criner says.

There are also potential medicines to help with chronic rejection, which about half of lung recipients face within five years.

While most centers only transplant two lungs at a time, Temple does more single than double lungs. It can mean faster help for patients on life-support, as well as seniors.

"We have found that in our older patient population, so 65 to 70 and older, their survival is the same, whether they get a single or a double-lung transplant," she says.

Dr. Criner says the next advance will be a better understanding of the chronic rejection process, and with it, better medications.

And she believes some drugs to delay it or even eliminate it are on the horizon.