TECH

The drones: the future transport of organs for transplantation, according to study

The drones are not only used to deliver home deliveries as Amazon, because their utility is also being tested in other areas. These devices have helped reduce crime in a city north of Mexico, save bathers from drowning in the sea south of Australia and even accelerate medical services such as the transfer of medical equipment, blood transfusions in areas difficult to access and, more recently, organs for transplantation in an emergency.Researchers at the University of Maryland Medical Center decided to test the effectiveness of drones in this last use. His study consisted of putting a kidney, which was healthy enough for the study but not for a human patient, into a sterile cylindrical plastic container inside a refrigerator and moving it through the airs of the city of Balitmore with a DJI drone M600 Pro that they adapted.


To know exactly what happened during the course, they developed a wireless biosensor for the organ that measures the temperature, the barometric pressure, the altitude, the vibration and the GPS location, which has been baptized as "Control and quality control device of human organs for long-distance travel "(HOMAL, for its acronym in English). This model of drone was chosen because its six motors are under their rotors, reason why they keep away the heat of the HOMAL.Once the kidney was in the hands of the research team, 14 test flights were performed with varying distances and speeds. The longest journey was 4.8 kilometers, with a top speed of 67.6 km / h. Meanwhile, the temperature of the refrigerator remained at 2.5 degrees Celsius.


They also performed kidney biopsies before and after all flights, as well as after a reference flight in a small airplane, which is another common way of transporting organs at medium distances. At the biopsies, no damage was seen in the kidney. In fact, it was observed that the organ was less subject to vibration stress than during a regular delivery aboard a turboprop aircraft."I think what we did here is very good, very exciting," said Dr. Joseph Scalea, of the University of Maryland Medical Center, the journal of Translational Engineering in Health and Medicine (IEEE) , who published the research this week, adding:This is the first step in a series that I believe will bring patients closer to their life-saving organs faster and with better results.
Scalea believes that the team will be able to successfully test a kidney transplant, delivery and transplant in early 2019. According to Business Insider, about 20% of the kidneys donated in the United States can not be delivered. fast enough to the compatible donor, which is equivalent to some 2,700 wasted bodies that could have saved lives every year.


H. T.