Damaged Liver Repaired by Keeping Organ Alive Outside Human Body for 3 Days Before Transplant

Swiss researchers have recently kept a liver alive outside the body of a human for three days before being transplanted, a first in the world.

Typically, a New Scientist report said, an organ can be kept for only 12 hours if stored conventionally on ice and in commercially available perfusion machines.

A cancer patient on the Swiss transplant waiting list was given the option of using a treated human liver after spending years with severe liver conditions, including liver cancer and end-stage liver disease.

One year after the surgery, the patient thrives minus any sign of liver impairment or organ rejection and stays healthy.

A Lifesaver

Researchers said the development might be a lifesaver because the technology could increase the number of livers available for transplant and allow surgery to be scheduled a few days ahead.

The organ was transplanted in May last year, and the patient was able to leave the hospital after a few days. He said he is very grateful for the life-saving organ.

Because of his quickly progressing tumor, the patient had a small chance of getting a liver from the waiting list within a reasonable time.

There is a growing gap between the demand for liver transplants and the small number of organs available. Because of the traditionally short time an organ can be stored, the number of organs that can be matched to transplant recipients is limited.

'Ex-Situ Normothermic Perfusion'

Pierre-Alain Clavien, director of the Department of Visceral Surgery and Transplantation at the University Hospital Zurich, and his colleagues demonstrated a human liver's preservation for three days outside of the body through a machine that performs a technique called "ex-situ normothermic perfusion."

This is when the organ is supplied with blood at normal body temperature outside the body. Essentially, the machine emulates the human body as precisely as possible to offer ideal conditions for human livers.

A related CNET report specified that according to the study, the medical team prepared the liver in the machine with various drugs, making it fit for transplant even though it was at first not approved for the procedure.

The Liver 4Liver4Life team found that the transplanted organ worked normally, with minimal injury, as blood flow from internal blood vessels returned.

Moreover, basic immunosuppressants were only provided during the first weeks of surgery. Among other things, connecting the said organ to the machine allows it to be treated with antibiotics or hormonal treatments, and lengthy laboratory or tissue tests can be performed minus time pressure.

Technology for More Rapid Treatment in Patients

Professor Clavien explained that their treatment shows that treating livers in the perfusion machine is plausible to alleviate the lack of functioning human organs and save lives.

According to professor of macromolecular engineering Mark Tibbitt from ETH Zurich, the interdisciplinary approach to addressing multifaceted biomedical challenges embodied in this project is medicine's future.

He added that this would allow them to use new findings even more rapidly for treating patients. The findings of the study are published in Nature Biology Journal.

Related information about Normothermic liver perfusion technology is shown on Yashoda PR's YouTube video below:

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