E-Mail IMAGE: These representative images of fatty and non-fatty (or lean) show human livers before and during machine perfusion. The graphs on the right demonstrate shifts in gene expression in fatty and... view more Credit: Jennifer Sanders, Rhode Island Hospital Thousands of livers donated for transplantation are discarded or turned down every year due to concerns about organ quality and function. New insights into why these organs are considered unusable and how they function during external perfusion could help save lives by greatly increasing the number of livers that are transplantable. After a liver is removed from a donor's body, it undergoes a process known as perfusion which flows blood or a blood replacement though the organ's blood vessels to keep them open and active before the transplantation surgery.