Artificial intelligence can predict which liver donors are most likely to provide usable organs, improving transplant outcomes compared to traditional doctor assessments.
Artificial intelligence (AI) may significantly improve liver transplant outcomes by predicting which donors are most likely to provide viable organs, according to a report from NEWSMAX. The new study suggests AI can estimate how soon a donor will die after life support is removed, a critical factor since surgeons reject livers if death takes longer than 30–45 minutes.
“By identifying when an organ is likely to be useful before any preparations for surgery have started, this model could make the transplant process more efficient,” said Dr. Kazunari Sasaki, a clinical professor of abdominal transplantation at Stanford Medicine in Palo Alto, California. “It also has the potential to allow more candidates who need an organ transplant to receive one.”
Researchers trained the AI using data from over 1,600 donors between December 2022 and June 2023, incorporating vital signs, blood work, neurological assessments, and ventilator settings. Testing on 400 past donors and 200 prospective donors showed the AI accurately predicts time of death 75% of the time, compared to surgeons’ 65%.
While the rate of missed donation opportunities remained around 15%, Sasaki said improvements are underway. “We recently found an algorithm that achieves the same accuracy in predicting the time of death but with a missed opportunity rate of about 10%,” he noted. Researchers are also exploring applications for heart and lung transplants.