A donor liver survived three days outside a body

In 2022, a team at the University of Zurich connected a liver that had been rejected for transplant to a machine that mimicked the human body, pumping warmed, oxygenated blood through it continuously for days instead of hours.

The liver, from a damaged donor organ initially judged too risky to use, stayed on the perfusion machine for three days. During that time the surgical team treated it, including removing a tumor, before transplanting it into a patient who otherwise had no timely match.

The recipient recovered with a fully functioning liver, the first time a human liver had been kept outside the body on a perfusion machine for days and then successfully transplanted. The result was a single case, not a trial, so the Zurich team is now working to repeat it and refine the technology before it reaches wider use.

One liver, three days, a second chance.