RE: Device Keeps Organs Alive Outside The Body
----------------- Bulletin Message -----------------
From: Precarious333
Date: Apr 26, 2007 4:43 PM
Thanks Andre and www.outlawjournalism.com
Device Keeps Organs Alive Outside The Body
Richard Gray
Sunday Telegraph
April 24, 2007
A pioneering device that keeps organs “alive” outside the body could dramatically improve the success of transplants and provide new ways of treating tumours and liver disease.
For the first time, scientists at the University of Oxford have managed to disconnect an organ from the body’s blood supply and keep it functioning on an artificial blood circuit.
The procedure has allowed them to keep livers viable outside the body for more than 72 hours - four times the current time limit.
It is hoped the technique will make it possible to transplant organs that would previously have been unusable - alleviating the problems caused by a shortage of donors.
Organs are capable of regenerating high levels of damaged tissue when isolated from the rest of the body, the scientists found.
A version of the technique could also be used to treat organs with high doses of chemotherapy to combat cancers without harmful side-effects on the body. Such treatments might also be developed to fight liver disease caused by alcohol and hepatitis.
Scientists are now planning the first clinical trials in patients and hope to use the technique on other organs including the lungs, kidneys and pancreas. They hope the procedure will be widely used within five years.
“There are a lot of things you can do therapeutically to an organ if you can isolate it from the rest of the body,” said Peter Friend, a transplantation professor at the university.
“We have good evidence that we can take an organ that has been really quite badly damaged before it is removed and recover it so that it works.
“We think it will not only improve the results of a transplant, but it will also go some considerable way towards making more organs available, as we can start to use organs that are currently declined as they are not suitable.”
He added: “In the longer term, we also envisage carrying out therapeutic approaches such as chemotherapy by isolating the organ from the rest of the body, treating it with the drug and reconnecting it without having to remove it.”
Trial surgery has involved removing a liver from the body’s blood supply and linking it to a pump and artificial blood vessels.
Fresh blood, enriched with oxygen and nutrients needed to keep the liver alive, is then pumped through the liver at normal body temperature. It is thought the organ is able to repair itself because it is freed from its normal function within the body.
Currently, surgeons rely on donors who have been declared clinically dead but whose hearts are still beating. Lack of oxygen and the need to store organs on ice during transport can cause severe damage.
The new method will allow the transplant of organs from patients whose hearts have stopped for up to an hour and the use of damaged organs.
Constantin Coussios, a biomedical engineering lecturer who is developing the new device with Prof Friend, added: “The organ never knows it has left the body as we provide it with oxygen, maintain the temperature and feed it with nutrition so it can survive. We have yet to find the maximum amount of time we can keep an organ alive for outside the body.”
Researchers hope the new method will increase the number of organs viable for transplantation by more than 50 per cent.
More than 7,200 patients in Britain are currently waiting for organ transplants, but only 3,000 such operations were carried out last year.
A spokesman for the NHS organisation UK Transplant said: “There is a desperate shortage of donated organs in the UK, so anything that can improve the success of a transplant and increase the number of organs available is to be welcomed.”
http://www.outlawjournalism.com/news/?p=5552
From: Precarious333
Date: Apr 26, 2007 4:43 PM
Thanks Andre and www.outlawjournalism.com
Device Keeps Organs Alive Outside The Body
Richard Gray
Sunday Telegraph
April 24, 2007
A pioneering device that keeps organs “alive” outside the body could dramatically improve the success of transplants and provide new ways of treating tumours and liver disease.
For the first time, scientists at the University of Oxford have managed to disconnect an organ from the body’s blood supply and keep it functioning on an artificial blood circuit.
The procedure has allowed them to keep livers viable outside the body for more than 72 hours - four times the current time limit.
It is hoped the technique will make it possible to transplant organs that would previously have been unusable - alleviating the problems caused by a shortage of donors.
Organs are capable of regenerating high levels of damaged tissue when isolated from the rest of the body, the scientists found.
A version of the technique could also be used to treat organs with high doses of chemotherapy to combat cancers without harmful side-effects on the body. Such treatments might also be developed to fight liver disease caused by alcohol and hepatitis.
Scientists are now planning the first clinical trials in patients and hope to use the technique on other organs including the lungs, kidneys and pancreas. They hope the procedure will be widely used within five years.
“There are a lot of things you can do therapeutically to an organ if you can isolate it from the rest of the body,” said Peter Friend, a transplantation professor at the university.
“We have good evidence that we can take an organ that has been really quite badly damaged before it is removed and recover it so that it works.
“We think it will not only improve the results of a transplant, but it will also go some considerable way towards making more organs available, as we can start to use organs that are currently declined as they are not suitable.”
He added: “In the longer term, we also envisage carrying out therapeutic approaches such as chemotherapy by isolating the organ from the rest of the body, treating it with the drug and reconnecting it without having to remove it.”
Trial surgery has involved removing a liver from the body’s blood supply and linking it to a pump and artificial blood vessels.
Fresh blood, enriched with oxygen and nutrients needed to keep the liver alive, is then pumped through the liver at normal body temperature. It is thought the organ is able to repair itself because it is freed from its normal function within the body.
Currently, surgeons rely on donors who have been declared clinically dead but whose hearts are still beating. Lack of oxygen and the need to store organs on ice during transport can cause severe damage.
The new method will allow the transplant of organs from patients whose hearts have stopped for up to an hour and the use of damaged organs.
Constantin Coussios, a biomedical engineering lecturer who is developing the new device with Prof Friend, added: “The organ never knows it has left the body as we provide it with oxygen, maintain the temperature and feed it with nutrition so it can survive. We have yet to find the maximum amount of time we can keep an organ alive for outside the body.”
Researchers hope the new method will increase the number of organs viable for transplantation by more than 50 per cent.
More than 7,200 patients in Britain are currently waiting for organ transplants, but only 3,000 such operations were carried out last year.
A spokesman for the NHS organisation UK Transplant said: “There is a desperate shortage of donated organs in the UK, so anything that can improve the success of a transplant and increase the number of organs available is to be welcomed.”
http://www.outlawjournalism.com/news/?p=5552
posted by Gandolfo at 4/27/2007
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