Transbronchial lung biopsy for the diagnosis of rejection in heart-lung transplant patients.

Long-term success of human lung transplantation has been hindered by the lack of an effective and repeatable method of obtained tissue from the transplanted lung for histology. Management of patients is complicated by the difficulty in distinguishing clinically between opportunistic infection of the lung and rejection. As a result, a large number of patients in recent reports develop chronic disabling obliterative bronchiolitis, believed to be the consequence of "chronic" rejection. Twenty-one patients have undergone heart-lung transplantation in our institute since 1984. During fiberoptic bronchoscopy, 43 transbronchial lung biopsies were performed in 15 patients. Twenty episodes of rejection occurred in 11 patients, from whom 16 sets of biopsies showed the typical changes of perivascular infiltrate and mucosal inflammation. Three biopsies were falsely negative; six routine biopsies performed when patients were well were all normal. Overall sensitivity was 84% and specificity 100%. By contrast, the sensitivity of the chest radiograph was only 40%. Opportunistic lung infection in 8 patients was diagnosed by transbronchial biopsy with a sensitivity of 38% and specificity of 100%. In no patient with opportunistic infection were the histologic features of rejection seen. Transbronchial lung biopsy offers a safe and repeatable method to obtain tissue from heart-lung transplants for histology. It has enabled the management of the lung transplant patient to be equivalent to that of the kidney, liver, and heart transplant patient.