UK HealthCare will temporarily pause its lung transplant program. Here’s why.

Kentucky’s largest university medical system announced late Friday it will temporarily hit pause on providing lung transplants, beginning in mid August.

In an internal email obtained by the Herald-Leader and confirmed by UK HealthCare, the Lexington-based hospital system said lung transplants would be halted “due to the departure of the program’s primary surgeon.”

This departure compromises the University of Kentucky’s ability to meet necessary certification standards set by the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network.

Those standards require a “primary surgeon be responsible for ensuring the program’s operation and compliance with its requirements,” the message from Eric Monday, executive vice president for finance and administration, and Bob DiPaola, provost, reads. “We are notifying OPTN that as of August 18, we will temporarily not meet this requirement.”

The surgical director of UK’s Lung Transplant Program was recruited and accepted a leadership opportunity elsewhere, according to the university. Until two new lung transplant surgeons are hired, the program will remain “inactive.” UK didn’t provide more information on the surgeon’s departure.

Patients currently awaiting a lung transplant, or who are in the transplant evaluation stage — roughly 75 patients — are being contacted by letter, MyChart account, and nurse coordinators “with information regarding potential transfer to regional, high-volume transplant centers if they so desire,” the university said.

Patients who’ve already received a lung transplant and require post-transplant care won’t be impacted, UK said.

Lung transplant demand in Kentucky is high

The program’s pause comes as Kentucky continues to have a high demand for lung transplants. The commonwealth consistently ranks as one the states with the highest rates of lung disease in the country, year to year. In 2021, the American Lung Association pegged Kentucky as having the highest incidence rate of lung cancer of all 50 states.

While the lung transplant program is temporarily paused, the university hospital system will not only stop providing lung transplants, it won’t take patient referrals, evaluate patients for a transplant, or add new ones to a wait list, UK said.

In March of this year, UK HealthCare successfully provided its 500th lung transplant since the program’s founding in 1991. In 2022, 31 patients received a lung transplant — a record number. The volume of patients who’ve received a lung transplant has grown by more than 10% in the last four years, though UK declined to provide specific numbers.

In March 2022, the UK Transplant Center was the first to utilize the “lung-in-a-box,” a machine which mimics the environment of a human body in order to allow lungs to “continue breathing” while being transported. The machine was used last year to transport a pair of lungs by plane more than 300 miles to UK’s Albert B. Chandler Hospital in Lexington, where they were successfully transplanted into a patient.

Dr. Sravanthi Nandavaram, medical director of the program, said the machine is pivotal, because it allows organs to travel longer distances to reach patients.

There is a “critical organ shortage, and 20-30% of patients die while on the waiting list for a new set of lungs,” she said at the time.

A member of UK HealthCare’s communications team declined to provide details on how many lung transplants UK has provided, how many people are currently on a wait list awaiting a lung transplant, and which regional health care facilities are considered “high-volume transplant centers,” where many Kentuckians currently on a wait list will be referred.

UK said it’s “committed to investing the necessary resources to not only resume lung transplants, but to increase access for patients” across its transplant programs.”

To meet that goal, the hospital system said it’s working to “aggressively recruit” two more lung transplant surgeons and two additional heart transplant surgeons. Expanding capacity in this way is part of UK HealthCare’s “new strategic plan,” the university hospital system said.

This story may be updated.