TransMedics® Organ Care Systems

Machine Perfusion brings more travel time and better health to donated organs.

TransMedics® OCSWith machine perfusion, devices like the TransMedics® OCS allow the liver, heart or lungs to never stop their natural activity.

As the list of patients waiting for a transplant grows, doctors are searching for new ways to preserve organs longer and improve the outcomes for recipients.

Typically, when an organ is retrieved for transplant, it is preserved in a solution and placed in a cold storage container for transport to the receiving hospital.

While these organs are carefully handled and in the overwhelming number of cases are ready to be warmed and brought back to life, there are still risks. Sometimes, a transplanted organ can go through a period of “shock” when returning to its functional state. This can cause slow graft function within the transplanted organ, or a period of instability in the recipient’s organ function.

Also, the time an organ can be in transit is limited by the time it can survive in a cold, “suspended” state, placing a limit on the distance medical teams can travel to retrieve a donated organ. Despite these limitations, most transplanted organs perform well, and transplant surgery is the most advanced and successful it has ever been.

Yet, the doctors of Henry Ford Transplant were determined to do better. That’s why we led the nation in use of the TransMedics Organ Care System (OCS). Henry Ford Health 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. The system expands the number of organs available for transplant by allowing deceased-donor organs to travel much farther. Where organ-matching once was limited to a single state, now organs can travel thousands of miles and more patients can receive a transplant than ever before.

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 is actually making the donor organ healthier as it is treated by organ preservation specialists on the way to Henry Ford.

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, but you can rest assured that Henry Ford Transplant is 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 organ machine perfusion at Henry Ford, contact Ahmed Nassar, M.D., Director of Organ Perfusion Research and Implementation.

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