Every 10 minutes, someone is added to the national transplant waiting list. When an organ - like a heart - becomes available, doctors only have four hours to get it where it needs to be. Now, a new system may help keep hearts viable longer.
For decades, organ donation has relied on an ice cooler.
"The heart comes out of some person's body and then it's placed on ice. So cold storage has been the cornerstone of heart transplantation and all transplantation for 50 years," said Dr. Ashish Shah with the Department of Cardiac Surgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
Now, Vanderbilt University Medical Center is testing a new system designed to keep the heart beating.
"And if that's the case, then it really takes the time element out of transplantation," Dr. Shah said.
The Organ Care System or OCS is a portable perfusion and monitoring consol that pumps warm, oxygenated, donor blood through the heart. The device is made by Transmedics and Dr. Shah said it could revolutionize heart transplantation.
"Now you're not thinking about organs that are available locally, 2-3 hours distance, now you're talking about organs all throughout the United States and as we've seen from our colleagues in Europe and Australia, almost transcontinental possibilities."
While OCS is still experimental in the United States, it has been approved for use in other countries. Vanderbilt expects to begin the trial later this year with its first recipient.
