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Medical Content Created by the Faculty of the Harvard Medical
School  What Is It?  In lung transplant surgery, someone with
life-threatening respiratory problems is given one or two
healthy lungs taken from a person who has died. If one lung is
transplanted, the procedure is called a single-lung transplant.
If both lungs are transplanted, it is a bilateral or double-lung
transplant.  Lungs for transplantation usually come from young,
healthy people who have had severe brain damage because of
trauma or cardiac arrest (a stopped heart). Their lungs and
other organs are maintained with life-support machinery.  Under
certain circumstances, two living people can donate small parts
of their lungs to one person in desperate need of a transplant.
Each person donates one lobe (section) of a lung. This rare use
of living donors is done in some cases because of a great
shortage of suitable lungs from donors who have died. Entire
lungs are never transplante