Naked Science Forum
Life Sciences => Physiology & Medicine => Topic started by: JennyGracie on 18/02/2019 14:53:12
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Akhil wants to know,
Can ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) or a perfusion machine system keep a liver or heart viable for years if we keep supplying oxygen and nutrients?
Can anyone help us answer this?
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Current standard procedure is to store organs at a cool temperature, to almost stop metabolism, without actually freezing.
Heart and lungs should have less than 6 hours between organ procurement and transplantation. For liver transplants, the cold ischemia time can be up to 24 hours.
With all these organs, the degree of function decreases the longer the organ is stored. So we are not at the point of being able to store organs indefinitely.
Since the body has a "use it or lose it" philosophy, for longer-term storage the organs would need to be exercised by doing their normal functions - a heart would need to pump against a resistance, and kidneys would need to filter out urea, etc. This means they will need a supply of oxygen and glucose...
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_procurement#Preservation_and_transport