Women Struggle On Lung Transplant List, Experts Say

Key Takeaways

• Women are less likely than men to get a donated lung

• Even after allocation reforms, women are still 16% less likely to get a donation

• Women’s anatomy and biology tends to be more complex, making it tougher to find an appropriate match

TUESDAY, Oct. 28, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Women are less likely than men to find a donor lung, despite new systems to make organ allocation fairer, a new study says.

Women were 32% less likely than men to receive a lung implant before the reforms went into effect in March 2023, researchers reported recently in the Annals of Thoracic Surgery.

But afterward, they were still 16% less likely than men to find a replacement lung from a donor, results showed.

“There was a modest improvement in narrowing the gap, but we still have a lot of work to do,” senior researcher Dr. Abbas Ardehali, director of the UCLA Heart, Lung, and Heart-Lung Transplant Programs, said in a news release.

There are many reasons why women have a hard time finding donor lungs, he said.

Women tend to be smaller, which limits the physical compatibility of available donated lungs, Ardehali said.

They are also more likely to have other complicating factors that make it hard to find a good match — antibodies from prior pregnancies, autoimmune disorders and blood transfusions among them, Ardehali said.

To address this, the U.S. Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network adopted a Composite Allocation Score that added new variables like height, blood type and immune sensitivity to better match donors and recipients.

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For their study, researchers analyzed nearly 6,900 patients listed for lung transplantation between March 2022 and March 2024. They then grouped the patients depending on whether they entered the system before or after adoption of the reformed scoring system.

Men and women tended to have the same risk of dying while on a waitlist and the same post-transplant survival rate.

However, women were less likely to get a transplant, even after the reforms were implemented, the study found.

“Further refinements to the scoring system are needed to ensure a fair and effective organ allocation system for all patients, regardless of gender,” Ardehali said.

More information

The American Thoracic Society has more on lung transplants.

SOURCE: UCLA, news release, Oct. 21, 2025; Annals of Thoracic Surgery, Oct. 8, 2025

What This Means For You

Female lung patients should be aware they might have a more difficult time finding a donor organ.