OrganOx® metra®: Innovative Technology Preserves Donated Livers for Improved Outcomes
When people think about organ preservation for transplant, the image that most likely comes to mind is an organ in a cooler being transported to the center where the transplant will take place. That image is based on the current standard for organ preservation - cooling the liver to 4oC with cold preservation solution, which helps minimize cellular injury during removal of the organ until it is transplanted into the recipient.
But, transplant specialists at MedStar Georgetown Transplant Institute now have a whole new way to preserve the donated liver. MedStar Georgetown University Hospital is the only hospital in the Washington, DC region, and one of a handful in the U.S., using a new normothermic perfusion system used for organ preservation—the OrganOx® metra®.
Rather than preserving the organ by simply cooling it to slow down metabolism, this technology is like placing an organ on a modified “heart-lung pump” so that it receives warm oxygenated packed red blood cells, nutrients and medications, and near physiologic temperature and blood pressures. This allows the liver to function like it does while actually in the body, producing bile, metabolizing glucose, and maintaining pH. This allows the transplant surgeon to constantly assess the function of the organ prior to it being transplanted.
Livers perfused on the OrganOx® metra® have been shown to suffer less injury than livers transported in cold storage in a randomized clinical trial1. The trial included 266 subjects at 14 U.S. liver transplant centers. The study demonstrated an improvement shown by a reduction in the incidence of early allograft dysfunction, a measure of how much damage the organ sustains during the transplantation process, from 25% with cold storage to 19% with the OrganOx® metra®. Livers were also stored for 75% longer on the OrganOx® metra® compared to cold storage. The device demonstrated a comparable safety profile to cold storage.
“This dynamic new technology allows us to provide patients in need of a liver transplant with a better preserved organ and allows our transplant specialists to more thoroughly assess the quality and function of the donor organs while they are still attached to the device before transplant,” said Thomas M. Fishbein, MD, Executive Director of the Medstar Georgetown Transplant Institute and professor of surgery, Georgetown University School of Medicine. “This technology allows us to increase the number of donor livers available for transplant, expanding access to life-saving transplants for the nearly 12,000 people in the US who are currently on the waiting list for a liver transplant.”
https://ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT02775162