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...more than 100,000 patients in the U.S., their life depends on finding an organ to replace a damaged or diseased one. In the never-ending tug between organ supply and demand, the scales have never tipped in favor of the patient; only a fraction of the people needing a new kidney, liver or heart actually receive one. To move people off the organ-waiting list, doctors either have to boost the supply of donors, or improve the viability of existing organs...
Researchers from the Netherlands report in the New England Journal of Medicine that they have found a way to increase the chances that kidneys from deceased donors will succeed after transplant, thus sparing patients from expensive follow-up care or even another organ transplant. In the largest and first study of its kind, doctors compared two existing ways of preserving kidneys taken from deceased donors - in cold storage in an ice pack, or via cold perfusion, which involves hooking the kidney up to a machine that pumps a chilled blood-like solution throughout the organ. (See the top 10 medical...
Currently, about 62% of kidneys transplanted each year in the U.S. are harvested from deceased donors; many of those organs cannot be transplanted if they aren't correctly preserved. Past studies have shown that a kidney must be transplanted within 24 hours to lessen the risk of failure in its new host. Most organ centers handle kidneys pre-transplant by washing, then submerging them in a preservation solution and melting ice. But recent evidence has suggested that perfusion machines, which have been around since the 1970s, might do a better job of maintaining the organs and perhaps promote survival once...
...transplantation of about 500 sq cm of skin, arteries, veins, nerves, muscles and bony structure, all of which had to be attached with sufficient dexterity to restore the patient's ability to feel, blink, eat, smell, speak and - not incidentally - smile. This was not what doctors call solid-organ transplant; it was a multitissue transplant, which is an order of magnitude more difficult than, say, a heart transplant or a hand graft...
According to the study, the discrepancy is due to the expensive post-surgical care required after organ transplantation. For successful organ transplantation, the patient must undergo long-term immunosuppressive therapy. If the patient is unable to pay—and uninsured patients seldom are—the transplantation is less likely to succeed...