OREANDA-NEWS. July 03, 2015. Lifeline Scientific (AIM: LSIC), the transplantation technology company, welcomes the publication in The American Surgeon of the meta-analysis study ('Study'): "Machine Perfusion: Not Just for Marginal Kidney Donors", which concludes that the benefits of machine perfusion should not be limited to marginal kidneys.

The study concludes that machine perfusion of donated kidneys, using technology such as the LifePort Kidney Transporter, was beneficial in reducing delayed graft function (DFG) in standard criteria donors (SCD), and not just in donation after cardiac death (DCD) or expanded criteria donors (ECD), where the benefits of machine perfusion are already widely recognised. DGF requires patients to endure renal dialysis post transplantation and is well established as being associated with costly post transplant complications, including increased hospitalisation and graft failure.

SCD kidneys tend to be from younger and healthier donors, whereas ECD kidneys are likely to come from older donor who may have an underlying medical condition that increases the risk of graft failure. DCD refers to donors that do not meet clinical criteria for brain death but in whom cardiac function has ceased before the organs were presented for transplantation.

The study used several methods to control the differences between the groups, but in a cohort of propensity-matched MP vs SCS recipients, where there were 8,929 patients each in the MP and CS groups, DGF occurred in 16.8 per cent of the MP group against 25.3 per cent of the SCS group.

Commenting David Kravitz, CEO of Lifeline Scientific, said:

"This is compelling news for patients, payors, and transplant centres as reportedly almost half of the deceased donor kidneys that present in North America every year come from standard criteria donors. Whilst there is wide spread clinical support for the benefits of using LifePort on ECD and DCD kidneys, the use of LifePort on SCD kidneys has not been universally adopted. These important findings show that using LifePort routinely for all donor kidneys, and not just marginal organs, could significantly benefit patient outcomes when compared to the common practice of simply storing donor kidneys in a box of ice.

"LifePort is the standard of care world-wide for machine perfusion of kidneys. In North America with placements in nearly 90% of the organ recovery programmes, we have observed that a number of leading transplant centres understand the benefits of machine perfusion for SCDs, and currently employ LifePort for all of their kidney transplantation procedures. We hope that this study will help convince many more centres to adopt protocols for the broader use of LifePort, beyond cases that involve marginal organs."