Due to the worldwide organ shortage, interest in the use of marginal liver allografts has increased. More widespread use of marginal grafts is limited by graft injury from cold storage and the risk of poor outcomes after transplantation. Warm (subnormothermic and normothermic) ex vivo liver perfusion has emerged as a novel preservation strategy to recover marginal organs and potentially increase the organ pool. Over the last decade, advances in the field have taken warm ex vivo liver perfusion from the laboratory to clinical trials. While most investigation thus far has focused on the rescue of marginal grafts for expansion of the donor pool, warm perfusion (WP) preservation also has great potential to facilitate novel graft interventions prior to transplantation.
Part of the book: Frontiers in Transplantology