TransMedics Organ Care System Used for Heart Transplant from Non-heart Beating Donors
TransMedics OCS™ Heart technology has enabled a groundbreaking European first by the team at Papworth Hospital to preserve and assess a heart from a new non-heart beating donors
ANDOVER, Massachusetts, March 26 /PRNewswire/ -- TransMedics announces that the use of its OCS™ Heart technology has enabled a groundbreaking European first by the team at Papworth Hospital to preserve and assess a heart from a new group of potential donors known as non-heart beating donors (NHBD). The patient is reported as having made a swift recovery and is at home with his family.
This heart was retrieved from a donor whose heart had stopped beating in the body. Currently, non-heart beating donors are not considered for heart transplantation due to the limitations of the cold storage preservation technique, which is routinely used in the UK. The heart used for the Papworth patient was retrieved, resuscitated to a beating state and clinically assessed using the TransMedics OCS™ Heart technology.
The ability to safely transplant a donor heart from non-heart beating donors could be a paradigm shift to potentially increase the pool of viable donor hearts to help more patients suffering from end-stage heart failure, says Dr. Waleed Hassanein, President and CEO of TransMedics, Inc. "We are dedicated to expanding the use of donor organs to result in successful transplantation using our breakthrough OCS™ platform and are actively engaged in 4 large pivotal trials for hearts, lungs and livers in the U.S. to bring the revolutionary OCS™ technology to the U.S. market hopefully very soon."
What is the TransMedics Organ Care System (OCS™)?
Since the advent of organ transplantation, the cornerstone of organ preservation has been cold ischemic storage (placing organs on ice). Although this method is intended to reduce the extent of organ damage during transport, significant deterioration of the donated organ still occurs. The longer the organ is kept on ice, the greater the damage. Moreover, the cold storage technique does not enable any resuscitative or assessment while the organ is being transported from donor to recipient. Given the limitations of cold storage, it is estimated that globally 60-65% of donor hearts cannot ultimately be used for transplantation.
TransMedics has developed the world's only portable medical device capable of overcoming the limitations of cold storage for multiple organ transplantation.
The OCS™ technology was designed to provide a comprehensive solution to all three key limitations of the cold storage technique, as it:
- Minimizes cold ischemia injury by perfusing the heart with warm oxygenated blood;
- Optimizes the condition of the organ by replenishing oxygen, nutrients, and hormones that would otherwise become depleted;
- Provides continuous monitoring and assessment of the organ until the point of transplantation
These unique capabilities of the OCS technology have the potential to:
- Increase utilization of current donor organs
- Improve patient survival
- Reduce post-transplant complications
- Improve cost-effectiveness of the transplant procedure
About TransMedics, Inc.
TransMedics Inc. is the world's leader in portable ex-vivo machine perfusion and assessment of donor organs for transplantation. Headquartered in Andover, Massachusetts, the company was founded to address the unmet need for more and better organs for transplantation.
For more information, please visit www.TransMedics.com.
Contact:
Amanda Hayhurst, Gloucester Road Communications
Tel: 01789 720501/0772 0205581
Neal Beswick, TransMedics, Inc.
Tel: 001 (978) 289-2615