When a transplant patient receives the call saying a long-awaited donor organ is ready, there can be a mad rush to get it on ice and on the move ready for the operation.
To reduce the stress, and expense, involved in such operations, a team of medical scientists have created the Organ Care System – a box designed to keep organs alive outside the human body.
Surgeons in Phoenix recently used the system to successfully transplant a lung, but the machine can also maintain hearts, kidneys and livers, according to reports.
The OCS was created by Massachusetts-based firm TransMedics and the system has been designed to simulate conditions of the human body as close as possible. As well as keeping lungs breathing, pictured, the system can also make hearts beat, help kidneys produce urine and livers produce bile
The OCS was created by Massachusetts-based firm TransMedics and the system has been designed to simulate conditions of the human body as close as possible.
As well as monitoring temperature, the system can make hearts beat, help kidneys produce urine and livers produce bile.
The recent OCS lung transplant was carried out by doctors and surgeons at the Heart and Lung Institute at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Centre, in Phoenix.
Patient Victoria Bloomfield only had 30 per cent lung capacity due to disease and needed a replacement.
The transplant lung was kept in the OCS until the surgeons were ready, and the surgery took four hours to complete.
During which time, the organ was protected with a cool solution during the implant.
Traditionally, a lung can be preserved for between five hours and nine hours on ice. Hearts last for even less time, between three and eight hours.
The longest a heart and lung has been kept on the system has been between 10 and 11 hours but the firm said organs can be kept in the OCS for longer.
The OCS makes it possible to keep these vital organs alive and transplant-ready for much longer.
Journalist Shini Somara from Al Jazeera America witnessed the transplant and said: ‘The sound of the lungs mechanically breathing was surreal, and we followed these previous organs back to the operating room.
Once surgeons were ready to make the swap, they held Victoria’s old lung and new lung side by side. Victoria’s old lung was tiny frail and full of ugly black carbon deposits, while her new donor lung was large, pink and fluffy.’
A spokesman for TransMedic told MailOnline the heart and lung system are both in use in the UK at Harefield and Papworth hospitals.
TransMedic plan to bring the liver system to the market later this year.
