A kidney was successfully delivered via drone for a scheduled transplant — in a first-ever technique medical professionals hope will make future organ delivery faster and safer.
The organ — a left kidney — was transplanted into a 44-year-old Baltimore woman at the University of Maryland Medical Center following the breakthrough April 19 drop-off.
But not just any drone was used — the unmanned aircraft that made the delivery was custom-built with eight rotors and multiple powertrains, which helped get the package off the ground, officials said in a statement Friday.
The kidney was stored in a small white box labeled “perishable” and decorated with “Donate Life” stickers before it was carefully strapped to the drone, video chronicling every step of the special delivery showed.
A “wireless mesh network” was used to control and closely monitor the aircraft and “provide communications for the ground crew at multiple locations,” officials said.
The drone was also equipped with “aircraft operating systems that combined best practices from both UAS [unmanned aircraft system] and organ transport.”
It eventually made a gentle landing at the hospital’s Shock Trauma helipad and then hand delivered to the operating room.
Fine-tuning the aircraft wasn’t easy.
“We had to create a new system that was still within the regulatory structure of the FAA, but also capable of carrying the additional weight of the organ, cameras, and organ tracking, communications, and safety systems over an urban, densely populated area — for a longer distance and with more endurance,” said Matthew Scassero, the director of the University of Maryland’s UAS Test Site.
“There’s a tremendous amount of pressure knowing there’s a person waiting for that organ, but it’s also a special privilege to be a part of this critical mission.”
The patient, who had spent eight years in dialysis while waiting for a new kidney, was discharged from the hospital on Tuesday.
“This whole thing is amazing. Years ago, this was not something that you would think about,” she said.
Officials with the hospital and university prepared for the landmark organ flight by first using drones to transport saline, blood tubes and a healthy, but nonviable, human kidney — deliveries which were also all successful.
Medical pros believe drones can now be utilized more to help make transplants more readily available.
Last year, nearly 114,000 people were on waiting lists for organ transplants, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing.
About 1.5 percent of deceased donor organ shipments didn’t make it to the intended destination, while close to 4 percent of shipments saw delays of two or more hours — putting the organ’s viability at risk.
“There remains a woeful disparity between the number of recipients on the organ transplant waiting list and the total number of transplantable organs,” said Dr. Joseph Scalea, assistant professor of surgery at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, which teamed up with experts at the University of Maryland and the Living Legacy Foundation of Maryland for the flight.
“This new technology has the potential to help widen the donor organ pool and access to transplantation.”
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