Device Keeps Liver Alive Outside Body For 24 Hours 62
kkleiner writes "A new device will keep a liver alive outside of the human body for up to 24 hours. Developed at Oxford, the OrganOx circulates oxygenated red bloods cells and nutrients through the liver while maintaining the proper temperature. Doctors estimate that this new technique could double the number of livers available, saving the lives of thousands who die every year awaiting transplant."
Wait a minute (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
If the subject is a liver then in what sense is it remarkable that they're kept alive?
You need to keep it fresh for the delivery. Although, from POV of the transplant recipient, I guess that would be a relivery, wouldn't it?
cool, but the Ex Vivo Lung is just breathtaking (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
just breathtaking
I see what you did there.
Try the brain next (Score:3, Funny)
Head in a jar, here we come!
Re: (Score:2)
Head in a jar, here we come!
Ladies and gentlemen, I can envision a day when the brains of brilliant men can be kept alive in the bodies of dumb people.
What? (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Figures they'd do the liver first (Score:5, Insightful)
Because you know, all those people with defective, cancerous, or physically-damaged livers don't really need the second chance, either.
Yes, you've been told through all thirteen years of your life that drinking and abusing drugs can damage your liver. That doesn't mean it's the only way a liver can be damaged.
Re: (Score:2)
Cancers would generally disqualify you, as any cancer outside the liver would throw a massive house-wrecking party when you start the patient on immunosupressants after the transplant.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Active alcoholism is a contraindication to transplant, however, damage due to alcohol related diseases is not:
Except from UpToDate [uptodate.com] (requires subscription)UpToDate.com
INTRODUCTION — After initial reluctance to transplant patients with alcoholic liver disease, it is now clear that transplantation offers an excellent survival advantage in appropriately selected patients, equal to that for other disease indications. The original reluctance stemmed from the p
Transplants & cancer (Score:3)
I have had a liver/kidney transplant. The MELD scoring process determines who get the next liver available. Blood type is considered, transplants match blood type, even though this is not strictly technically necessary, because otherwise, type O (universal donor, anyone can use type O) patients would be on longer lists then other blood types - it's a fairness problem. MELD score considers various blood test score indicators for how sick you are. The sicker you are, the higher score you get, and thus hig
Re: (Score:2)
Protip: you don't get a liver transplant if you are a drinker.
Re: (Score:2)
If you stop drinking entirely for some months you qualify for a new one.
Re: (Score:2)
How can there be no justification? I have nothing against prolonging an alcoholic's agony, but this should be handled by putting them on a bottom of the list. People who don't intend to destroy their livers should be given precedence IMHO. Given that the shortage of organs of all kinds is going to stay with us for the foreseeable future, this pretty much means that in fact drinkers are not going to get transplants. Yes, I do realize that there are many things that must match in a liver and it may just happe
Re: (Score:2)
Of course, how available do they have to get before you do? Given the study someone else posted showing that there is already a fair supply of livers, and increasing availability may not decrease mortaility.... perhaps a surplus of livers means that the availability of transplant can be opened to more people.
Re: (Score:2)
What's a fair supply in terms of the probability that a recipient finds a matching donor? Just having plenty of donor organs may simply mean that you'll have plenty of livers that none of your recipients are good matches for. It may well be that, for example, people with less likely combinations of some matching factors (as I shall call them) are more likely to get liver disease. So it's more likely for an unlikely liver to get sick -- then good luck finding a matching donor organ. It's a made up scenario,
Re: (Score:2)
Jim Baxter, the famous Rangers player and well-known alcoholic received two liver transplants before he died of pancreatic cancer several years later.
Perhaps they didn't have a choice? (Score:4, Informative)
The liver is one of the more resiliant organs (the only one that can regenerate). It's probably the easiest organ to start with.
Re: (Score:2)
Give back you medical degree. It isn't then only organ that can regenerate.
Re: (Score:2)
"The liver is the only internal human organ capable of natural regeneration of lost tissue; as little as 25% of a liver can regenerate into a whole liver." Other organs can heal, the liver can actually grow back.
Re: (Score:2)
Right tech/wrong place (Score:4, Funny)
I need a device to keep my liver alive inside my body.
Re: (Score:2)
Alcohol consumption? (Score:2)
So will this help me get more drunk? Less hungover? Will I dance better? I mean, what else do you really use your liver for?
Re: (Score:1)
Don't ever eat out and contract hepatitis.
Re: (Score:2)
Also, avoid accidentally poisoning your liver with meds or mushrooms, and stay off them bad genes. No sex, and no blood transfusions either.
While at it, we could simply stop all transport accidents by telling people to not crash their vehicles.
Re: (Score:2)
Also, avoid accidentally poisoning your liver with meds or mushrooms, and stay off them bad genes. No sex, and no blood transfusions either.
While at it, we could simply stop all transport accidents by telling people to not crash their vehicles.
Or just tell them not to drive
The problem isn't just supply (Score:4, Informative)
This is quite specific to liver transplants in the United States. Here most patients who die while awaiting a liver transplant have had an offer of a donor liver. 55% of patients who die have had the offer of a high-quality donor liver.
Increasing supply will always be a good thing, but there are huge issues to be addressed in making sure those on the US wait list for a liver transplant actually get a transplant from the available organ supply. It seems patients and doctors are turning down way too many good organs.
"Our data show that the current liver allocation system has provided one or more transplant opportunities to nearly all candidates before death/delisting. Therefore, simply increasing the availability of de-ceased donor livers or the number of offers may not substantially reduce wait-list mortality." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22841780 [nih.gov]
Re: (Score:2)
The most heartbreaking thing about that, I was just reading the story of someone who died after being delisted. Delisted because he was a cancer patient on medical marijuana, and testing positive for marijuana disqualified him for a liver.
The rationale? A positive on the drug test may indicate drug abuse and smoking increases exposure to aspergillius fungus, both of which are risk factors for the implanted organ.
seriously... and to think there is actually not a shortage of livers.... thats just terrible.
Hello, may we have your liver? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
It gets worse when you realize that the shortages are the result of including people that couldn't be given a transplant even if there were a perfect match available right now. Either they're no longer healthy enough or they're otherwise not cleared for the transplant. In either case they're kept on the list to bolster efforts to get more organs.
Which is problematic because in the US the standards employed to ensure that the system doesn't turn people into organ donors when there's still a chance of saving
Re: (Score:2)
What's more, in many places they're changing the standards so that it's opt out and good luck if you happen to be taken to a hospital that doesn't have a record of you not wanting to give up your organs, or where you have specific wishes you want respected.
I'm going to go out on a short, cynical limb and guess that the hospitals still get paid (well) for removing and preserving the organs from such "donors" whether or not they have a chance of finding a recipient, and that these same hospitals lobby for the revised standards in the name of "saving more people."
Re: (Score:2)
I think you may have guessed wrong. This page [lutheranhospital.com] states that the costs of harvesting the organ is borne by the recipient/the recipient's insurance. If correct, it is very much in the interests of the hospital harvesting the donor organs for them to be used rather than discarded. There would be no economic motivation to harvest an organ that they know will not be used.
Re: (Score:2)
Good for heavy nights out too (Score:2)
Good news for mine (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
More information (Score:1)
The lead researcher on the project was a Dr H. Lecter, who is also researching methods of Fava Bean propagation, and assisting Italian wine growers in enhancing the quality of Chianti.
When asked for a comment, Dr Lecter said: I do wish we could chat longer, but... I'm having an old friend for dinner. Bye
94% (Score:1)
I don't know how to keep a liver alive outside a body for 24 hours, but I know how to destroy a liver inside a body in under 24 hours.
Why only 24 hours? (Score:2)
What requirement for liver survival is not being met? I recall quite some time ago when it was considered to be some sort of breakthrough when they realized "you know that pump we use when we do heart surgery? The body needs pulsing circulation to survive, so let's do that instead of just streaming fluid." I have to wonder if they are trying something similar here.
Tried it once... (Score:2)
... didn't like, no, didn't like it one bit...