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The Medical Center at the University of Maryland received a historic delivery to its shock heliport last week: a human kidney delivered by drone. The first copy of this type was delivered by the LG-1000, a 50-pound drone created by the university's faculty of medicine, specifically to carry organs, reports CBS Baltimore. The kidney was successfully transplanted to the patient, a 44-year-old woman who had been on dialysis for eight years after the April 19 drone flight. The drone monitored the status of the organ during the 3.8 km trip from the Living Legacy Foundation in Baltimore West. Researchers say that using drones for delivery could revolutionize the organ transplant process, in which delays sometimes render an organ unviable.
Before the flight, the researchers conducted test flights with blood tubes and, possibly, a healthy but unviable kidney. United States today reports. "There remains a sad difference between the number of receivers on the waiting list for an organ transplant and the total number of transplantable organs," said Joseph Scalea, project leader in a communicated. "This new technology has the potential to help expand the donor's pool of organs and access to transplantation." Scalea, one of the surgeons who performed the transplant, praised the "outstanding collaboration" between "surgeons, engineers, the Federal Aviation Administration, organ procurement specialists, pilots, nurses and ultimately the patient". The current system, he said, takes "too much time, it is dangerous and it is way too expensive". (Read more stories of drones.)
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