New Technologies, Approaches Help Surgeons Maximize the Use of Transplant Organs

An April Bulletin feature article describes new techniques and technology to recover, preserve, and rehabilitate donor organs that are optimizing the use of transplant organs and helping close the chronic gap between the supply and demand for transplant organs.

The article discusses some keys points, such as how organ supply and demand are out of balance.  At the same time, an inefficient system often finds available organs going unused, though large-scale efforts to reduce the time between harvesting and transplantation are underway.

Finally, the article explains the important role that surgeons, as a lynchpin in the organ transplant system, can play in the process. Improvements to capturing organs after circulatory death and expansion of the donor pool are part of the effort, but it also involves hospitals increasing their willingness to take on higher-risk donors and recipients, which will improve organ use as well as innovation.

“We need to take a more holistic approach to risk management,” said Zoe Stewart Lewis, MD, PhD, MPH, FACS, chief of the Division of Transplant and Hepatobiliary Surgery at the University Hospitals (UH) Cleveland Medical Center in Ohio and director of the UH Transplant Institute. “People on the transplant waiting list shouldn’t die because transplant centers are too choosy about what organs they accept.”