For organs kept alive before transplant, tantalizing possibilities

For Robin Larocca, her lungs ravaged by a rare disease, the options were disappearing quickly.

In three months, her doctors said, she would be too sick for the transplant she needed to save her life. In a year or so, she would likely be dead.

There appeared to be no available match, particularly because Larocca needed a double transplant rather than the more common single lung.

Then doctors at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania offered her a chance to be in a clinical trial of a process that allows surgeons to better assess and eventually, perhaps, fix an organ that otherwise would have been rejected. She didn’t hesitate.

“I didn’t feel there was any other choice,” said Larocca, who lives in Jackson Township, N.J. “I wanted to extend my life and give my daughter a better quality of life.”

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