News & Events: Lung Transplant

Brad Dell relives the exhilirating and captivating events leading up to his lung transplant surgery at UCSF on its one-year anniversary. His riveting account appears at Cystic Fibrosis News Today.  Jan. 14, 2017 was the worst day of anxiety I'd had in the five months of waiting for my lung transplant. A frantic, nearly palpable tension was in the air. After five confident months believing the "light at the end of the tunnel" was rebirth, rather than death, I suddenly broke. I simply didn't think I had the strength to make it to transplant. I refused to communicate with my parents most of [...]

ABC News San Francisco (KGO) reports on the case of a Utah man, recovering from a lung transplant in Pennsylvania after a Utah hospital refused to put him on their transplant list because of past marijuana use. (The man subsequently died after the airing of the KGO story.) UCSF transplant surgeon, Ryutaro Hirose, M.D., was interviewed by KGO and regarding the policy on this is issue at UCSF. "We've recently liberalized our criteria regarding marijuana," said Dr. Ryutaro Hirose who is a transplant surgeon at UCSF, the country's busiest transplant center. Unlike the hospital in Utah, UCSF [...]

The Chico News and Review reports on the journey of Richard Wodrich to the double lung transplant he received at UCSF Medical Center for treatment of irreversible and incurable chronic lung disease. The transplant was performed by Dr. Jasleen Kukreja, Surgical Director of the UCSF Lung Transplant Program.  Longtime local bluegrass musician Richard Wodrich loves to sing and play guitar, but that became progressively more difficult over the last decade or so, to the point where he had trouble just breathing—let alone playing music. About four years ago, he was formally diagnosed with chronic [...]

The UCSF Lung Transplant Program, has once again achieved "statistically significant" higher than expected outcomes for both patient survival and graft survival*, according to the newest data just released by the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients (SRTR). Last year, SRTR ranked UCSF among the top three lung transplant programs in the U.S. for higher than expected outcomes. This year, however, UCSF was ranked first.The UCSF program is a true multi-disciplinary collaboration that includes surgeons, pulmonologists, nurses, pharmacists, dietitians, social workers, physical therapists, [...]

UCSF News reports on the story of Rowan Jimenez, a rock climber who underwent a double lung transplant at UCSF for treatment of scleroderma, an autoimmune disease, crediting UCSF with getting his life back and resuming his passion for climbing mountains. The 10,911-foot view from the top of Cathedral Peak in Yosemite National Park is a familiar sight for Rowan Jimenez. The 44-year-old rock climber and musician has traversed this mountain many times before, but this particular attempt on a September day in 2010 was different: It marked a triumphant return on the two-year anniversary of his [...]