NEW TECHNOLOGIES FOR ORGAN PRESERVATION IN INDIA: SAVING LIVES AND MOVING SCIENCE FORWARD

Organ preservation is no longer just a technique to buy time. It's about adding value to each precious organ, making sure it operates as effectively as possible, and achieving the best results for the people who get it.

- By Dr. Shyam Varma, Robotic Urologist and Transplant Surgeon, Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospitals, Andheri, Mumbai

One of the most remarkable things that modern medicine has done is transplant organs. It gives those who are about to die from organ failure a second chance at life. Transplant technology has come a long way over the years, but the success of every transplant still rests on one very crucial thing: the preservation of the given organ.

In India, where people are progressively becoming more conscious of organ donation and the infrastructure for transplant programs is getting stronger, they are now focused on a less well-known but extremely critical aspect of transplant success: organ preservation technology.

The Early Era: Cold Storage and its Limits

For years, static cold storage (SCS) has been the best approach to keep organs alive in India and around the world. After being pulled out, organs are cleaned using a preservation solution like University of Wisconsin (UW), Custodiol HTK, or Euro-Collins and maintained in ice-cold temperatures (typically 0–4°C) to slow down how quickly cells break down.

Cold storage is cheap, simple, and accepted by everyone. It still works so effectively that most Indian hospitals use it for kidney transplants. Usually, cold storage is enough to keep the organs alive if they are just being moved for 6 to 8 hours.

But its limits become clear in the following cases:

• Moving things over long distances, such between states or across the country,
• Ischaemia that lasts longer,
• Using "marginal organs" from older donors or donors with significant health concerns,
• Deceased donor transplants, if the time to preserve organ is already extended,
• A difference between supply and demand that makes it take longer to move organs.

India requires more modern, adaptable preservation technologies to keep up with the growing number of transplants, the larger area they serve, and the higher reliance on programs that use deceased donors.