OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) – LifeShare of Oklahoma has made national history by being the first organ procurement organization in the U.S. to successfully place a liver for transplant following preservation on a newly-approved device called the OrganOx metra.
The metra is designed to perfuse the liver with blood and other fluids to preserve cells, extending the time from organ removal to transplant from just hours to more than one day.
“It allows us an opportunity to grow the donor pool and expand the time to get the liver to just the right patient and not have livers be unusable because there’s not enough time to get it to the right patient,” said Jeffrey Orlowski, President and Chief Executive Officer of LifeShare.
“When we started down this path to grow our liver preservation efforts last November, the vision was to bring this important, new lifesaving technology to LifeShare to further our mission of saving more lives,” said Orlowski. “We are pleased to announce our vision has become a reality with our preservation team placing a liver for transplant after it was perfused with the metra.”
Prior to this recent success, all U.S. transplants involving the device have either been conducted by transplant center teams as part of the clinical trial or following Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval.
LifeShare has their own in-house team of specially trained technicians that operate the perfusion device.
“The work LifeShare is doing is a major step forward in liver preservation,” said Orlowski. “Our work is proof that an OPO-based liver perfusion system can be successfully implemented, thereby broadening efforts to save more lives across the nation.”