Cross-Regional Unmanned Aircraft Transport of Donor Lungs

This prospective, single-arm study will evaluate the feasibility, timeliness, operational reliability, and preliminary safety of transporting donor lungs by a long-range unmanned aircraft system from Nanning to Guangzhou, China. Adult lung transplant candidates will be enrolled after a donor lung has been legally allocated and clinically accepted and after written informed consent has been obtained. Each formally activated transport task will use standard donor-lung perfusion and cold preservation, triple sterile packaging, and a dedicated transport container with continuous monitoring of temperature, vibration, pressure, position, and communication status. The primary outcome is the actual door-to-door transport time from the donor operating room exit to the recipient operating room entry. Secondary outcomes include transport success, time saved compared with contemporaneous ground-transport estimates, lung preservation and ischemic times, transport-environment performance, donor-lung condition on arrival, and early recipient and graft outcomes through 90 days after transplantation. Twenty-five participants corresponding to 25 formally activated donor-lung transport tasks are planned.