Sensor Predicts Which Donated Lungs Will Fail After Transplant

the_newsbeagle writes: A lung transplant can be a life-saving intervention—but sometimes the donated lung stops working inside the recipient's body. This "graft dysfunction" is the leading cause of death for transplant patients in the early days after surgery. While lab tests can look for genetic biomarkers of inflammation and other warning signs in a donated lung, such tests take 6-12 hours in a typical hospital. That's too slow to be useful. Now, researchers at University of Toronto have invented a chip-based biosensor that can do quick on-the-spot genetic tests, providing an assessment of a lung's viability within 30 minutes.

Comments

Re:Would prefer to know before the transplant.

[Trepidity]

That's exactly the point of this, isn't it? The article says (bold added): "The new sensor can predict, before transplantation, which donated lungs will malfunction."

According to the article, the previous tests took too long, so by the time test results came back, the lung would no longer be viable to transplant. This one can get results faster, so surgeons can wait around 30 minutes before deciding whether to go ahead with the transplant or not.