The University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG) can store donor livers for much longer than previously thought – sometimes up to twenty hours – without affecting the safety of the patient. This was evident from Tuesday in the scientific journal The Lancet published research from the UMCG. The Groningen hospital says it is the first in the world to be able to store livers for longer, and can therefore perform operations during the day as standard.
Since 2020, the UMCG has been investigating whether it is safe to store donor livers in a perfusion machine. When a donor liver became available, doctors sometimes immediately proceeded with surgery. Other times they waited many hours and stored the liver in the machine. The research shows that there were no significant health differences afterwards between patients who underwent immediate surgery and those who only underwent surgery after a long storage period. The two groups were largely the same in age and gender.
A major advantage of the longer storage time with the perfusion machine is that the UMCG no longer has to perform operations at night. This means that fewer staff are needed in hospitals during night shifts. Operating teams are also fitter: the researchers noted that liver transplants take an average of two hours longer at night than during the day.
According to Vincent de Meijer, professor of surgery and head of the liver transplant program at the UMCG, the hospital already performed almost all liver transplants during the day in 2023: 79 out of 83. “Also transplants in children and also in re-transplants where a patient is for the second or receives a donor liver for the third time. Only in very exceptional, acute situations has a transplant been carried out immediately,” says De Meijer.