Fashion

Odds & Ends

Health

Travel

Epicure

Keeping donated kidneys

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-01-06 10:14

Machines that send fluid circulating through a donated kidney while it is being preserved for transplant keep the organ healthier than the standard method of simply immersing it in fluid and transporting it on ice, doctors reported on Wednesday.

The study, the first large-scale international comparison of the two preservation methods, found that while more than a quarter of the 336 kidneys shipped in cold storage failed to work properly right away, only 20.8 percent of machine-preserved kidneys failed.