“The Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Foundation Trust said: “It is very rare for patients to specify that they do not wish to be considered for clinically healthy lungs from smokers.”
“This is because the risks are much higher if patients decline donor lungs from a former smoker, and decide to wait for another set of organs which are both a match for them and from a non-smoker, to become available.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-20762437
They still should have let her know, though.
Chris Watson, vice president of the British Transplantation Society, told CNN that 49 percent of last year's lung donors in the UK were smokers.