We all want to live, it's why you're reading about getting a lung transplant! One things I see written about so much on social media is "choose a center with the highest survival rate" So it sounds like an easy decision if you've got 2 nearby transplant centers, Hospital A has a 3 year survival rate of 82%, and Hospital B has a 3 year survival rate of 84%. Why would you ever want to go with Hospital A? I very confidently did go with the hospital who had a lower survival rate. Why?!

Note: every lung transplant center should have their statistics published HERE at https://srtr.hrsa.gov/

Hear me out...

Both centers are probably very good, very capable, and very caring transplant centers. But why does one center have a lower survival rate, and why might you choose to go with the center who has a lower survival rate?

Hospital A might take on harder cases, they might take patients who are 75 years old, patients with more complications, patients who were rejected by other centers.

Hospital B might have a name they want to uphold, and a prestigious success (survival) rate. Because of this, they might be rejecting the more difficult cases. They might have a hard rule of no transplants over 70. They might be choosing the "easier" cases to work on in order to keep that prestige of having a higher survival rate than the other nearby centers.