Machine capable of storing liver for 24-hours enters India
In a revolutionary medical development, doctors in a Bengaluru hospital were able to assess the donor's liver before the transplant, a first in Asia. As per current scenario, livers are kept in cold boxes, so assessing it would spoil its qualities. But this machine, OrganOx metra can store livers till a whopping 24 hours and that too at room temperature, thus allowing assessment.
The main reason why livers can be preserved for so long is because the organ is infused with oxygenated blood, medications and nutrients. Currently, livers are injected with a preservation-fluid and cooled in an icebox. An Oxford University team has built this "normothermic machine" and put it on clinical trials since 2013; till now, 200 transplants have been conducted using livers kept inside it.
"Sub-optimal livers don't tolerate conventional cold storage and there is no reliable way to assess organ viability preoperatively," read the study paper. Donated livers become useless after ten hours, but courtesy this machine, doctors of Bengaluru's Aster Hospital noticed that fluids, medications and bile salts got flushed out of the donated liver at room temperature.
Liver transplant is one of the most complicated procedures and an expensive one at that, costing a person anywhere between Rs. 15L and Rs. 26L. Using this machine would add-up Rs. 5L to the bill, but Dr Sonal Asthana of Aster Hospital, who used the machine for the first time in India on April 10, said the machine's advantages would negate the costs.
Dr S K Mathur of Mumbai ZTCC, which transports cadaveric organs, applauded this machine's entry to India. "The transport time between the hospitals could deteriorate the liver's condition. In such cases, such a machine that can maintain a liver is of great help," said Mathur.
