Temple Hospital to resume heart and lung transplants

Temple University Hospital announced today that it is reactivating its heart, lung and heart/lung transplant programs now after stopping them last year.

The hospital stopped performing lung transplants in May after its primary lung-transplant surgeon left. It inactivated its heart transplant program in July because of low patient volume.

Since then, it has recruited T. Sloan Guy as chief of cardiothoracic surgery, and Yoshiya Toyoda as director of heart and lung transplantation and mechanical circulatory support.

Temple said that the United Network of Organ Sharing, a nonprofit that manages the U.S. organ transplant system, has given the hospital interim approval to restart the transplant programs.

Before the deactivation, Temple's heart-transplant program had been averaging five transplants a year, half the number needed to meet federal quality standards. The Pennsylvania Department of Health had said that the lung program had lower-than-expected survival rates.

Temple also performs liver and kidney transplants.