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Lung or heart/lung transplantation is rarely performed in infants and neonates. It is generally thought to be a risky and extremely difficult procedure, but it is also true that only a few patients might require this intervention. In fact, only few life-threatening and extremely rare conditions may pose the indication for a so early transplantation. This means that the expertise is not so diffused and this may bias the evaluation of the transplant need and its feasibility and suitability. Actually, good results have been reported also in the smallest patients in North-American centers (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25242126), describing this transplantation as a reality and depicting many unmet needs.
There are surgical and medical needs, there is a need to identify better the candidates, to do research to optimize their medical treatment, to create network to centralize their surgical treatment and increase surgical expertise and finally to understand the best medical pre-post surgical treatment including "bridge" procedures. All this is surely too advanced if the need to know more and take a picture on the present situation is not met.
Scope of this survey is in fact to take a picture of physicians awareness, availability and knowledge about lung/heart transplantation and related conditions in Europe. From this point onwards the other steps could be taken to improve the health of the most ill and unlucky patients