First 'warmed liver' transplant takes place in London

15 March 2013 Last updated at 18:11 GMT, BBC News

Surgeons in London have carried out the first 'warm liver' transplant using an organ which was 'kept alive' at body temperature in a machine.

Usually donor livers are kept on ice, but many become damaged as a result. The patient, 62-year-old Ian Christie from Devon, is doing well after the operation at King's College Hospital. The technology was developed by scientists at Oxford University who hope it could increase the number of livers available for transplant.

It provides an environment where the donor liver hardly knows it has left the body”

Prof Constantin Coussios of the Department of Engineering Science has been working on the project for 15 years in partnership with Prof Peter Friend, of the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences. After being removed from the donor, the liver is placed in the machine and tubes are connected to the main blood vessels. Oxygenated blood and nutrients are pumped through the liver which continues to function and produce bile.

Prof Peter Friend said: "It provides an environment where the donor liver hardly knows it has left the body. Instead of cooling it to slow its metabolism we keep it functioning at normal temperature and with oxygen and nutrition."

At present many donor livers are rejected for transplantation because they are damaged. Some have been deprived of oxygen while others contain too much fat and do not survive the cooling process. The Oxford inventors say their machine allows the liver to recover from damage it has sustained and enables medical staff to test the viability of the organ to see whether it is likely to work before being transplanted into the patient.