A new device can be used to better preserve donor kidneys fresh for transplantation, study authors wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine.

However, this doesn’t mean that problems will be eliminated. Kidneys still remain in short supply. According to some statistics released by the United Network for Organ Sharing, people diagnosed with diabetics and those with longstanding hypertension, whose kidneys fail in the lung run, usually wait no less than four years for their organ to be replaced.
In The United Kingdom, over 1,300 transplants involving kidneys from late donors are performed each year.

Kidneys are typically packed in ice for transportation in order not to deteriorate in the interval between the time of patient’s death and the moment they arrive to the right hospital. They are flushed out with a special solution and put into a box filled with ice in order to be preserved "fresh".

But a new study showed that, irrespective of the health of the donor, "by using machine preservation we can ensure that there will be more kidneys available for transplantation and that they will be in better health," said study author Rutger Ploeg, professor at the University Medical Center in Groningen.

The study, which experimented on kidneys from 336 donors who passed away in Europe in 2005 and 2006, compared the effectiveness of both methods.

One kidney of each donor was kept conventionally, in the most commonly-used method which involved putting it in a plastic bag of nutrients and keeping it on ice. The other organ had the same nutrients pumped through it by means of a battery-powered box called the LifePort Kidney Transporter.

After one year of follow-up, researchers found that 90 percent of the kidneys that had been kept traditionally were still working, compared with 94 percent of kidneys that had been preserved by using LifePort Kidney Transporter.