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Breathe again
Up to 80% of donated lungs never manage to make it a recipient – they are simply too damaged for a transplant.
A team of researchers has now found a way to rehabilitate the lungs of even severely damaged pigs to the point of meeting transplant criteria – a technique that, if applied to humans, could dramatically increase the number of people who undergo organ transplantation to save lives.
Pork (lung) out
In a study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, researchers at Columbia University and Vanderbilt University describe how they built a cross-circulation system that can pump blood from an organ recipient into a given lung, leaving it alive outside the body for that the doctors repair the damage.
To demonstrate the technique, they removed the pig's lungs, damaged them, then kept the organs alive and breathed them out of the animal's body for 36 hours. It was much longer than the six to eight hours that doctors have available to them today – and this gave researchers enough time to repair the lungs to meet the transplant criteria.
Transplantation Nation
The researchers believe that this technique could not only increase the number of usable donor lungs, but that it could also be used to repair damage to other organs.
"We believe that interventional cross circulation could be used to study the regeneration of other damaged organs, such as the heart, kidneys and liver," said researcher Matthew Bacchetta, in a press release, "in expanding the donor pool by recovering more organ transplants. "
READ MORE: New approach shows regeneration of severely damaged lungs [Columbia University]
More on the lungs: New video shows 3D printed lung "Breathing"
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