Cooled Organs Stretch Transplant Time - 0 views
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nehaha00 on 10 Aug 14In the article "Super Cooled Organs Could Stretch Time To Transplant" the author discusses how scientists have started an experiment to stretch out the shelf life of a harvested organ. The experiment was performed on rats, and in order to perform the experiment the scientists first harvested organs and essentially froze them, then the organs were sprayed with a variety of chemicals to keep the organ from developing ice crystals as well as to keep the organ functional. Then, after 3-4 days the organs were "defrosted" and transplanted to rats. The result was that that rats that received 3 day old organs (livers) lived for about 3 months and rats who received 4 day old livers had a 60% survival rate; whereas, rats who were given 3/4 day old livers preserved by modern day techniques all died. Which shows that the organ freezing method could potentially advance the duration for which an organ can be kept functional after being removed from a body which could drastically change the field of organ transplants.