Long-term outcomes of metallic endobronchial stents in lung transplant recipients are not affected by bacterial colonization.

OBJECTIVES We evaluated associations of endobronchial stenting with airway bacterial colonization, the antimicrobial resistance profile, hospitalizations for pneumonia and survival in lung transplant recipients. METHODS This is a retrospective single-centre study of 582 recipients of lung transplant during 2002-2018. We compared outcomes of 57 patients (9.7%) who received endobronchial stents (intervention group) to a control group of 57 patients without stents who were matched one to one for age, sex, year of transplantation, unilateral/bilateral transplantation and underlying disease. RESULTS For the intervention compared to the control group, airway colonization was more common for Pseudomonas (86% vs 35%, P < 0.001), Acinetobacter (21% vs 7%, P = 0.05), Klebsiella (21% vs 5%, P = 0.02) and Staphylococcus species (11% vs 0%, P = 0.02). The respective proportions of patients with positive bronchoalveolar lavage cultures on the third post-transplantation day, the day of stent insertion and 6-month post-stent insertion were 47.4%, 50.9% and 65.4% for Pseudomonas sp.; 15.8%, 12.3% and 3.8% for Klebsiella sp.; and 8.8%, 5.3% and 5.8% for Acinetobacter sp. The mean number of hospitalizations for pneumonia per patient was higher, without statistical significance, in the intervention than the control group (1.5 ± 1.7 vs 0.9 ± 1.5, P = 0.1). Kaplan-Meier survival curves did not show a statistically significant difference between the intervention group and the entire group without endobronchial stents (n = 525) (P = 0.4). CONCLUSIONS Lung transplant recipients with endobronchial stents were more likely to be colonized with pathologic bacteria and having pneumonia; however, stent placement was not associated with increased long-term mortality with appropriate stent maintenance.