UCLA Performs First Breathing Lung Transplant in the U.S.

First there was the “heart in a box,“ a revolutionary experimental technology that allows donor hearts to be delivered to transplant recipients warm and beating rather than frozen in an ice cooler. Now that same technology is being used to deliver “breathing lungs.“ The lung transplant team at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical successfully performed the nation’s first “breathing lung“ transplant in mid-November. The patient, a 57-year-old who suffered from pulmonary fibrosis — a disease in which the air sacs o