Since the 1960’s, organs for transplantation have traveled between donor and recipient in a cooler, filled with a solution that keeps them close to freezing. Upon arrival at their destination, those organs have been warmed and “woken up” as they are attached to their recipient.
However, in recent years, things have been changing, thanks to the arrival of machine perfusion. Devices like the TransMedics Organ Care System (OCS) allow the liver, heart or lungs to never stop their natural activity.
With machine perfusion, the donated organ is kept slightly below body temperature. It is connected to the OCS machine, which pumps blood and nutrients to the organ while outside the body. Instead of being “suspended,” hearts pump blood, lungs breathe and livers make bile, exactly as they would were they still inside the donor.
In some cases, the time spent in transit makes the donor organ healthier as it is treated by organ preservation specialists on the way to the hospital.
Detroit’s Henry Ford Hospital (Henry Ford Health’s flagship location) was one of a few US centers involved in the clinical trial of OCS-Liver and quickly adopted the use of OCS-lung and OCS-heart as they became available. These systems expand the number of organs available for transplant by allowing deceased-donor organs to travel much farther. Where organ-matching once was limited by distance and time, now organs can travel thousands of miles, and more patients can receive a transplant than ever before.
Organ perfusion is only available in select cases, and your transplant surgeon is best qualified to make the final decision to employ organ machine perfusion. Regardless of the method, Henry Ford Health doctors are ready, willing and able to employ the best and most cutting-edge solutions to offer safe and effective transplant procedures to as many patients as possible.
To learn more about Henry Ford Health’s organ transplant program, visit henryford.com/transplant.
