'Supercooling' may extend life of transplant organs

Conclusion When organs are removed from a living body their cells immediately begin to die, meaning they need to be transplanted into the donor as soon as possible to give the best chances of a successful transplant. The number of people needing organ transplant always outnumbers the number of suitable matched donors available. So having a technique that could preserve organs for longer and potentially allow them to be transported across greater distances to suitable recipients could, as the researchers say, be a great breakthrough. This is especially important as it can often be difficult to find a suitably matched donor (to prevent the body from rejecting the donation, the tissue type has to be as similar as possible), but if the geographical availability of donors were increased, then this could increase the likelihood of finding a matched donor.  This research demonstrated the technique of preserving with a nutritional solution and then supercooling to subzero temperatures of 0C to -6C. When rats were transplanted with a liver that had been preserved in this way for 72 hours, all of them survived to three months, showing no signs of liver failure. This triples the preservation time from 24 hours, which is the maximum that can be successfully achieved using standard techniques in rats. The 100% rat survival was limited to 72 hours of storage. When the storage time was extended by one day, rat survival almost halved to 58%. However, as the researchers say, with continued...
Source: NHS News Feed - Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Medical practice Source Type: news