Utah’s First Use of State-of-the-Art Organ-Saving Technology Announced By Intermountain Health Transplant Program

Intermountain Health’s Transplant Program is the first in Utah to use a new state-of-the-art organ-saving device that helps to maintain donated livers in a near-physiological state outside the body to enhance successful transplantation.

This new organ-saving technology called the OrganOx, has helped Intermountain Health’s liver transplant program save precious organs and the lives of patients desperately awaiting donor organs to survive.

The OrganOx is an innovative liver pump that provides continuous perfusion of oxygenated blood, medications, and nutrients at normal body temperature and near physiological pressures and flows, mimicking the conditions inside the body.

“This technology allows the donor liver to remain viable for longer periods of time, extending the time from organ removal to transplant from just hours to more than one day, and potentially travel longer distances between donor and recipient sites,” said Jean Botha, MD, medical director of Intermountain Health’s abdominal transplant program and Intermountain Primary Children’s Hospital’s pediatric transplant program.

“The device also enables real-time assessment of liver function and quality, which may help to increase the pool of suitable organs for transplantation,” Dr. Botha added.

By embracing new cutting-edge technology, such as OrganOx, the Intermountain Transplant Program which has seen a 367% growth from 2018 to 2023, makes it the third-fasted growing liver program in the nation with better than national outcomes and the shortest wait times for a liver transplant.

Sophie Hansen, 22, from Bountiful, Utah, is one of three dozen patients whose life has been saved by this innovative technology at Intermountain Medical Center in Murray.

When Hansen was just 3-years old, doctors diagnosed her with primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC), a chronic, incurable disease that slowly damages the liver’s bile ducts causing scarring.

Because her disease was caught early, her health was stabilized, but when she was 11-years old, her health deteriorated and was put on the liver transplant waiting list. She had to wait four years to finally receive a transplant.

Then her PSC returned last year, and she was listed for a second transplant in January 2024.

This time she did not have to wait long.

Hansen, who is now a transplant research coordinator at Intermountain Primary Children’s Hospital, received a call just a month later letting her know a liver was available, but it was a donation after circulatory death (DCD) liver.

“It was scary to accept anything but a perfect organ, but I was super excited knowing about the technology that was being used,” said Hansen. “We also had complete trust in the team.”

On February 13, 2024, she got her new liver and a new lease on life.

Just two weeks later, she was traveling to Colorado to present her latest research paper for school.

Hansen is back hiking and doing the normal things a 22-year-old should be doing – like finishing college.

Her lifelong journey with liver disease has inspired her to pursue a career in liver disease research in hopes of helping more kids like herself.

About 10,000 liver transplants are performed each year in the United States, but there is a waiting list of another 10,000 patients who need the lifesaving gift of a new liver.

“This is potentially life-changing for the thousands of patients on the national waiting list for a liver transplant, and the more than a thousand patients a year who die waiting for a liver to become available,” said Richard Gilroy, MD, transplant hepatologist and Intermountain Health’s liver transplant medical director. “Because of this technology we are able to use livers from donors that would previously not even have been considered for donation.”

Since 1986, when Intermountain Health’s adult liver transplant program started, more than 1,000 liver transplants have been performed, including living-related, deceased donor, and split liver transplantation.

Experts say every 10 minutes, someone is added to the waiting list, and every day, 17 people die waiting for a transplant. At the same time, more than 2,000 livers are discarded every year because they do not survive the typical cold preservation or are damaged by oxygen deprivation.

The OrganOx device kept the donor organ perfused and oxygenated outside the body, until Hansen and the transplant team at Intermountain Medical Center were ready for surgery.

The technology includes a pump that functions as the heart, an oxygenator that mimics the lungs, and other systems that continuously provide nutrients to the organ, making it functional throughout the preservation and transport.

Since the first use of the OrganOx on Dec. 15, 2023, Intermountain Health’s Transplant Program has used the device 35 times for liver transplantation.

Right now, the OrganOx is housed at Intermountain Medical Center in Murray. In the future, Dr. Botha said it’s designed to be portable to take to a donor’s operating room and go to different transplant centers.

OrganOx is also developing a kidney perfusion device that is currently in clinical trials.

“Intermountain Health continues to strive to offer this lifesaving treatment to as many people as possible across the country, and in so doing, is helping them live their healthiest lives possible,” said Dr. Botha.

About Intermountain Health

Headquartered in Utah with locations in six states and additional operations across the western U.S., Intermountain Health is a nonprofit system of 34 hospitals, 400 clinics, medical groups with some 4,600 employed physicians and advanced care providers, a health plans division called Select Health with more than one million members, and other health services. Helping people live the healthiest lives possible, Intermountain is committed to improving community health and is widely recognized as a leader in transforming healthcare by using evidence-based best practices to consistently deliver high-quality outcomes at sustainable costs. For more information or updates, see https://intermountainhealthcare.org/news.