To Cool or Not to Cool — Organ-Preservation Strategies in Transplantation

A major unmet need in deceased-donor organ transplantation is improved organ preservation, a process that involves enormous logistic constraints and financial costs. On the basis of a study by Niemann et al.1 on the protective effects of mild hypothermia in deceased-donor kidneys, Axelrod2 and investigators from the Niemann group conducted a subsequent economic modeling study that assumed an absolute reduction in the incidence of delayed graft function of 25 percentage points among extended-criteria donors and of 7 percentage points among standard-criteria donors. They posited that as compared with standard static cold storage, a cooling protocol that resulted in these reductions . . .