POPS Device Keeps Heart Alive for Nearly 12 Hours

Originally Published MDDI January 2002

R&D DIGEST

POPS Device Keeps Heart Alive for Nearly 12 Hours

The ability to successfully preserve and transport human organs is critical to the development of transplantation programs. Recent research has focused on creating systems that simulate conditions within the human body to preserve organs. In August 2001, one such device, called the Portable Organ Preservation System (POPS), was used to preserve a human kidney for 24 hours (see October 2001 Medical Device & Diagnostic Industry, p. 68). The device is being developed by TransMedics Inc. (Woburn, MA).

In October, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) used the POPS device for the first time on a human heart. Conventional methods for storing a donor heart provide a limited "shelf life" of about 6 hours. The UPMC group was able to maintain a human heart in its normal functioning physiologic state, with continuous blood flow, for approximately 12 hours with the device. The organ was then removed from the system for further examination.

Robert L. Kormos, MD, UPMC professor of surgery and director of thoracic transplantation and the artificial heart program, believes that "a longer preservation time would allow us to share organs across greater distances, and more patients would benefit from lifesaving transplantations." The researchers also suggest that the system could help improve transplanted organ function by resuscitating organs that could not have been used with conventional preservation methods. In this way, the method would allow the use of hearts and lungs from donors whose hearts had ceased functioning.

Copyright ©2002 Medical Device & Diagnostic Industry