Patients 70 years and older make up 13% of lung transplant recipients worldwide, up from 1% in 2004, a recent study presented at the European Respiratory Society Congress 2026 found.
The research, led by Christian Benden, MD, MBA, director of the Lung and Heart/Lung Transplant Program at Boston Children’s Hospital, found that lung transplantation is now described as a geriatric procedure. Dr. Gottlieb said that one U.S. center reported that patients 65 and older make up two-thirds of transplant recipients.
Here is what to know.
1. Patients 60 to 69 years old are now a large proportion of the population receiving lung transplants, and the proportion of patients 70 and older has grown 13-fold since 2004.
2. Over the last 15 years, The median age of patients presenting for their first lung transplant evaluation rose by 12 years. This was primarily driven by the loss of young patients with cystic fibrosis and pulmonary hypertension.
3. The national median recipient age will reach 65 years old within the next one to two years.
4. The increase in older recipients has been driven by interstitial lung disease, and a small rise in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
5. Five-year survival after lung transplant is around 60% overall, with recipients between 35 and 50 having the best outcomes. Survival among recipients 65 and older is about 16% lower.
6. Age is not a contraindication to lung transplant under ISHLT consensus criteria, but it is treated as a risk factor starting at the 65-70 age group, and as a high-risk factor after age 70. Major organ allocation systems tend to favor older candidates due to their survival while waiting for a transplant being worse than for younger patients. Three years ago, the U.S. shifted its scoring model from predicting 1-year post-transplant survival to 5-year survival and weighs medical urgency equally with likelihood of a successful outcome.
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