Researchers have revealed that a damaged human liver was treated and stored in a machine for three days before being successfully transplanted to a patient in a world first operation.
The man involved quickly regained his quality of life without any signs of liver damage or rejection, and remains healthy for a year after surgery.
Researchers have said that this development could save lives because the technology could increase the number of livers available for transplant and allow surgery to be scheduled days in advance.
The man who underwent surgery was a cancer patient on the Swiss transplant waiting list, who was given the option of using a treated human liver.
After his consent, the organ was transplanted in May 2021 and he was able to leave the hospital a few days later.
He said: “I am very grateful for the life-saving organ. Because of my rapidly progressing tumor, I had little chance of getting a liver on the waiting list in a reasonable amount of time.”
It occurs when there is a growing gap between the demand for liver transplants and the number of organs available.
And because the clinical practice is to store donor livers for no more than 12 hours on ice before transplantation, the number of organs that can be equated to transplant recipients is limited.
Image: Professors Pierre-Alain Clavien and the patient leaving the hospital
‘The future of medicine’
The human liver in this case was preserved at the University Hospital of Zurich by a machine that performs a technique known as ex situ normothermic perfusion.
This is when the organ is supplied with a blood substitute at normal body temperature while outside the body.
The machine copies the human body as accurately as possible to provide the ideal conditions for human livers.
Professor Pierre-Alain Clavien and his colleagues in the hospital’s visceral surgery and transplantation department prepared the liver in the machine with various drugs, which made it suitable for transplantation although it was not initially approved. for the procedure.
The liver was transplanted to the patient, who was suffering from several serious conditions, such as terminal liver disease and liver cancer.
Professor Clavien said: “Our therapy shows that by treating the liver in the infusion machine, it is possible to alleviate the lack of functioning human organs and save lives.”
Mark Tibbitt, a professor of macromolecular engineering at ETH Zurich, described it as “the future of medicine.”
“This will allow us to use the new findings even more quickly to treat patients,” he added.
The findings have been published in the journal Nature Biotechnology.