Organ transplantation has progressed tremendously with improvements in surgical methods, organ preservation, and pharmaco-immunologic therapies and has become a critical pathway in the management of severe organ failure worldwide. The major sources of organs are deceased donors after brain death; however, a substantial number of organs come from live donations, and a significant number can also...

Worldwide, the number of patients wait-listed for organ transplantation is growing. In most countries, however, there is a shortage of donor organs. Switzerland has one of the lowest post mortem donation rates among European countries. While most organs donated for transplantation are retrieved from primary or secondary brain-dead donors with sustained circulation (heart-beating donors), organ ...

Every day, the organ shortage crisis takes away lives of 17 patients (Health Resources & Services Administration, 2022). The number who require transplants significantly exceeds possible donors, and consequently, most pass while waiting for a matching donor organ. To address this issue, 3D bioprinting was suggested as method by which could receive functioning replica their own biocompatible...

The first liver transplantation (LT) was performed by Thomas E Starzl five decades ago, and yet it remains the only therapeutic option offering gold standard treatment for end-stage liver disease (ESLD) and acute liver failure (ALF) and certain early-stage liver tumors. Post-liver transplantation survival has also dramatically improved over the last few decades despite increasing donor and reci...

Heart transplantation (HTx) is the treatment of choice in patients with late-stage advanced heart failure (Advanced HF). Survival rates 1, 5, and 10 years after are 87%, 77%, 57%, respectively, average life expectancy 9.16 years. However, because donor organ shortage, waiting times often exceed expectancy, resulting a list mortality around 20%. This review aims to provide an overview current st...

In most western countries, there is a 'human organ shortage' with waiting lists for the performance of transplantation. In a recent report of the UNOS Ethics Committee it is stated that there are approximately 31,000 potential recipients on waiting lists, but only one fourth of potential donors give their specific consent. Xenotransplantation--defined as the transplantation of animal cells, tis...

We report a case of a patient who underwent successful combined liver-kidney transplant after two prior liver transplantations. The topic of liver retransplantation is very controversial. Given the critical organ shortage, the question arises as to whether hepatic retransplantation should be offered liberally despite its greater cost, and inevitable denial of access to primary transplantation f...

Kidney transplantation is the best treatment for patients with end-stage renal disease and recipients of living kidney donors fare better than recipients of deceased donors. In view of the shortage of organ supply and the long waiting list, expansion of the living donor pool has been sought. Importantly, donor acceptance criteria must first and foremost be grounded in concerns for donor safety....

The critical shortage of donor organs has spurred investigation of alternative approaches to either generate replacement organs or implant exogenous cells for treatment of end-stage organ failure. Non-thermal irreversible electroporation (NTIRE), which uses brief high electric field pulses to induce irreversible permeabilization of cell membranes, has emerged as a technique for tumor ablation. ...