Tampa General Hospital uses new technology to preserve donated organs
TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) – Doctors at Tampa General Hospital are using new technology to help preserve donated organs, and that’s leading to better outcomes for people needing lifesaving transplants.
The technology is called organ perfusion, and at the heart of the technique is a machine called the OrganOx Metra. It essentially recreates conditions inside the body to keep an organ alive. Through a series of tubes, blood and other necessary fluids are pumped through an organ, like a liver, to keep it functioning.
This allows the organ to survive outside the body longer as surgeons prepare a patient for a transplant.
“You have a finite amount of time to be able to put it in someone, and this is able to extend that period of time significantly,” said Dr. Vijay Subramanian, a liver transplant surgeon at TGH.
Doctors say the machine has changed the way transplant procedures are performed at TGH. Surgeons are no longer conducting transplant surgeries at night, with the machine eliminating the rush to get the organ into the patient without delay. By keeping the organ alive on the machine, doctors have more time to evaluate its health and prepare the patient and staff for surgery.
“It allows us to recover livers from far away, livers from donors that are medically complex, test their viability, see if they’re actually gonna work on this machine before we put it into a human being,” said Dr. Kiran Dhanireddy, the Chief of Tampa General’s Transplant Institute
New tech is also changing how organs are transported. A device called the Paragonix Liver Guard is a temperature-controlled device that replaces the more traditional cooler typically used by emergency crews. It can keep a donated liver viable for transport for many hours longer than the traditional method of transportation. Doctors say by using both devices together, they’re seeing a higher rate of successful transplants.
TGH performed a record number of transplants in 2023 at more than 700, and doctors say they’re on track to do even more by the end of this year.
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