MURRAY — A new medical device weighing 167 pounds gave Sophie Hansen another chance at life.
“My battle with liver disease began when I was three years old,” the 22-year-old said.
Hansen, a Bountiful native, suffers from primary sclerosing cholangitis, a chronic, incurable liver disease. Her biggest wish in life was a liver transplant when her health began to decline at age 11. She waited four years before receiving her transplant.
After her transplant, she traveled the world and began working as a researcher in the transplant departments at Primary Children’s Hospital and Intermountain Health.
“This organ allowed me to have a wonderful life as a teenager,” Hansen said. But it wasn’t to last: Her liver disease returned, faster and worse than before, and she was back on the transplant waiting list, with no idea how much time she had left.
“You either get a transplant or you die,” said Dr. Richard Gilroy, medical director of liver transplantation at Intermountain Health. “We tend not to put patients on the list who have a good chance of recovery.”
Hansen says this time the waiting list was different: instead of waiting four years for a transplant, he would have to wait just 33 days.
The change came not from her health or a sudden surge in donors, but from Intermountain Health’s new device, Organox, which keeps donor livers “outside the body at near-physiologic conditions,” according to a press release.
OrganOx works by keeping the liver at body temperature and pumping oxygenated blood, antibiotics and sugar to it, just like a healthy human body would. In these conditions, the organ can be kept safe for up to 24 hours, whereas organs can typically only last for six hours if kept on ice.
The machine also assesses the viability of certain livers, so livers that would never have been considered for donation before are now being selected.
According to the OrganOx website, clinical trials have shown that storage in the machine has resulted in 50% fewer organs being discarded and 20% more livers being transplanted compared to static refrigeration.
Thanks to the machine, Intermountain Health has the shortest wait times for liver transplants in the nation, with most patients only having to wait 22 days.
“This is potentially life-changing for the thousands of patients on liver transplant waiting lists across the country and the more than 1,000 patients each year who die while waiting for a liver,” Gilroy said.
Hansen underwent her second transplant on February 13. She’s now a senior at the University of Utah studying liver transplantation. She loves hiking, spending time with friends, and just had her first research paper published two weeks ago.
“I got a second chance at life,” Hansen said.
Organox doesn’t just give people a second chance, it improves their chances: Patients whose livers are preserved by the device spend less time in the operating room and hospital, says Dr. Jan Botha, and it also provides access to transplants for patients who previously lived too far away to receive them.
Gilroy added that the machine could also improve the performance of medical staff. Previously, all transplants were performed between 9 pm and 6 am, typically at the end of a long day for surgeons. With Organox, staff could schedule transplants for the optimal times, without having to race against the clock.
“I believe we are seeing a new dawn in organ transplantation,” Botha said.