Shin et al. reported on the first deceased donor kidney transplant case using hypothermic machine perfusion (HMP) on Jeju Island, Korea.  A single deceased donor with several hours of marginal oxygen saturation had both kidneys assigned to Jeju Island.  Due to logistical constraints at JNUH, they can only perform one kidney transplant procedure at a time, for this reason they decided to place the right kidney on HMP while the left kidney was being transplanted.

They found that:

• Even though the HMP kidney had a longer cold ischemic time (CIT) (12hrs 34min vs. 2hrs 31min) both patients showed good post operative progress.
• Serum creatinine gradually decreased in both recipients, with a slightly faster rate in the recipient of the HMP kidney.

The use of HMP device in Korea is limited to Jeju Island and only approved as an emergency relieve medical device, to help alleviate the geographic limitations of the island compared to mainland Korea.  Overall, they concluded that the first use of HMP at JNUH demonstrated that graft function can be safely preserved using HMP and hope that this will influence the use of HMP more widely in Korea.

Read the full article here: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10332281/