Researchers at Johns Hopkins Hospital have determined it is safe to transport kidneys, a finding they believe will allow for more transplants of the organ.
Doctors have worried that the longer a kidney is kept outside the body, the more likelihood there was that it wouldn't function as well than if it came from a live donor.
The Hopkins researchers looked at whether the amount of time a kidney was kept outside the body on ice had any harmful affects - and found there were none.
The findings were published online in the American Journal of Transplantation.
The researchers first tested a kidney shipped from California to The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore in 2007. Over the next three years they tested 56 other kidneys transported to 30 transplant centers in the United States and Canada.
These kidneys also suffered no harm. Once transplanted the kidneys began allowing the patient to urinate and cleared waste out of his or her system.
The kidneys studied traveled an average of 792 miles and spent an average of 7.6 hours outside of the body.
The researchers said the findings are particularly beneficial for the practice of "kidney paired donations." This process allows a family member to give a kidney that may be incompatible with a loved one to someone else who needs the organ. In exchange, that person's family member will get a compatible organ from someone else. Johns Hopkins pioneered this procedure.
This procedure is accomplished more easily if the kidneys can be transported rather than having the patients travel long distances, the researchers believe.
Until 2007, hosptials and surgeons required patients to travel, rather than have the kidneys shipped.
The Hopkins researchers believe their findings provide more support for transporting kidneys.
Caption (Valerie Eigner, 59, left, and her daughter Jamie Conway, 30, both of Arbutus, recuperate at the University of Maryland Medical Center after a transplant operation in which Eigner donated her kidney to her daughter. Photo by Amy Davis, The Baltimore Sun)