eli5: how come when your organs are in your body, they need to be 98 degrees, but in an organ transplant the organ is cooled?

Question

eli5: how come when your organs are in your body, they need to be 98 degrees, but in an organ transplant the organ is cooled?

In: 274

Answer 1

Imagine moving laptop from one location to another. Best would be to entirely power it down but if you can not do that putting it in to very low power use mode (aka sleep state) helps. Cold temperatures do that for living tissue because colder temperatures slow down chemical reactions. Most reactions that happen after an organ is removed are not desirable. Best would be to stop the chemical reactions entirely but for living tissue we have not yet figured out how to do that without irreversible damage.