Ex Situ Perfusion of Human Limb Allografts for 24 Hours.

Background: Vascularized composite allografts, particularly hand and forearm, have limited ischemic tolerance after procurement. In bilateral hand transplantations, this demands a 2 team approach and expedited transfer of the allograft, limiting the recovery to a small geographic area. Ex situ perfusion may be an alternative allograft preservation method to extend allograft survival time.

Quantifying organ donation rates by donation service area.

Previous measures of OPO performance based on population counts have been deemed inadequate, and the need for new methods has been widely accepted. This article explains recent developments in OPO performance evaluation methodology, including those developed by the SRTR. As a replacement for the previously established measure of OPO performance--donors per million population--using eligible deaths as a national metric has yielded promising results for understanding variations in donation rates among the donation service areas assigned to each OPO.