An international survey of cytomegalovirus management practices in lung transplantation.

Background: Cytomegalovirus (CMV) is an important infection in lung transplant recipients. Center-to-center variation in preventive and treatment strategies is unknown.

Methods: An electronic survey was sent to 102 lung transplant programs registered with the International Society of Heart and Lung Transplantation and United Network for Organ Sharing.

Results: Fifty-nine (58%) programs responded to the survey. For CMV prevention (D+/R-), 56 of the 59 (94.9%) programs used prophylaxis and two (3.4%) of them used preemptive therapy. For R+ patients, 86.4% used prophylaxis and 13.6% used preemptive strategy. Duration of prophylaxis was extremely variable ranging from 3 months to indefinite. Adjunctive prophylactic strategies included routine viral monitoring (51% D+/R-; 44% R+) and CMV immunoglobulin (32% D+/R-; 14% R+). The medication used for prophylaxis was valganciclovir with approximately half starting with intravenous ganciclovir. 9 of the 59 (15.2%) centers reported using specific CMV prophylaxis in D-/R- patients. Methods for viral monitoring included peripheral blood polymerase chain reaction, antigenemia, bronchoalveolar lavage viral culture, and bronchoalveolar lavage polymerase chain reaction. For treatment of CMV viremia, valganciclovir or intravenous ganciclovir were used. A total of 47.5% of centers routinely decreased immunosuppression at the time of viremia. Secondary antiviral prophylaxis was used routinely by 36 of the 59 (61%) centers.

Conclusions: Although prophylaxis is the most commonly used preventive strategy, significant variation exists in the way it is implemented. Specifically, duration of prophylaxis is extremely variable. Uniform international guidelines would be of value in this population.