TechKnow: Lung in a Box - Full Episode

July 16, 2015 6:00PM ET

WATCH: A machine keeps lungs breathing outside the body

Topics:
Science
Technology
 

TransMedics’ proprietary Organ Care System (OCS) is the first commercial and portable warm blood perfusion organ transport system. With the OCS, doctors are able to perform “living organ transplants,” where organs are kept warm and functioning in a controlled environment from the time they are recovered to the moment they are placed in the recipient’s body.

Contributor Shini Somara meets Victoria Bloomfield, who has suffered from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a chronic, and ultimately fatal, thickening or scarring of the lung tissue.

Bloomfield contacted St. Joseph's Hospital in Phoenix, Arizona, and learned she was eligible for a lung transplant. The hospital was also part of the TransMedics Organ Care System (OCS) trial, meaning that there was a possibility that her new lungs would arrive warm, breathing and pumping oxygen, rather than on ice.

After months of waiting, Bloomfield and her husband Brian finally got the call. Her new lungs were arriving, and they were coming on the OCS. 

Original Air Date: February 9, 2014