An organ recovery team from Vanderbilt University Medical Center recently flew to Alaska to recover a donor heart and returned to transplant it into a patient. The 5,704 nautical-mile trip is the farthest VUMC has traveled for an organ.
All told, the organ was preserved for 10 hours and 22 minutes before the transplant took place, a period known as ischemic time. Typical ischemic times for transplants are four to six hours.
This remarkable journey illustrates how new technologies make it possible to preserve organs longer, allowing Vanderbilt to look farther for a desperately needed match for people waiting on its organ transplant list.
“The farther we’re able to go, the more opportunity we have to take advantage of donor heart offers for our recipients and potentially get them a donor heart that they previously didn’t have access to,” said Stephen DeVries, DMSc, PA-C, a physician assistant who recovered the heart from the organ donor in Alaska. “This gets them off the transplant list and on the road to recovery.”
Traditionally, organ transplant teams simply placed a recovered donor organ in a cooler filled with ice, an effective technique for preserving an organ for about four hours. Under clinical trial, VUMC has used technologies that perfuse the organ with cold or warm blood to allow the organ to travel longer distances. In this case, the team used a new, special type of cooler that keeps the organ at 10 degrees Celsius. The technology requires no special equipment or personnel.
The recovery team consisted of DeVries; Will Tucker, MD (resident physician); and Christopher Schwartz, RN (preservationist).
The team flew from Nashville to Anchorage, Alaska, stopping for fuel in Montana.
VUMC organ recovery teams had previously traveled as far as Oregon and California and even Puerto Rico, but never Alaska, DeVries said.
“This case is a true testament to the dedication of every member of this team,” he said. “The unique ability of our program to apply and utilize the latest in research and innovation is what keeps us at the forefront of heart transplantation worldwide.”
Kelly Schlendorf, MD, associate professor of Medicine and medical director of the adult heart transplant program, said, “Steve DeVries said it right. This remarkable journey — to recover an organ that might not otherwise have been transplanted — is just one of many stories that sets our program apart.”
The recipient in this case had the transplant several weeks ago and is doing well, Schlendorf said.
