Global Medical Support/SOS Medical in Norway has the experience and the expertise when organs are to be transported over long distances from hospital to hospital. Time is the critical factor; so every detail is taken into account. Each step in the process is carefully planned and coordinated in order to save precious minutes.

It is Thursday evening. Rikshospitalet in Oslo is contacted by a Danish hospital which has a donor heart. Via Scandiatransplant's register, the Danish doctors have ascertained an organ recipient in Oslo. All is set and the family of the donor have consented. Rikshospitalet contacts GMS/SOS Medical and says that they need to send a team to the Danish hospital at once in order to collect the heart. The number of organ transports that GMS/SOS Medical coordinates is fairly stable at approx. 60 transports annually so the procedure is well-established.

"There may be weeks when we have two transports and weeks where we have 10. It varies greatly," says May Laila Furuli, business area manager for ambulance flights and transports at GMS/SOS Medical. "For many years we have had an agreement with Rikshospitalet in Oslo, which is the only hospital in Norway performing organ transplants. We also coordinate transports for others, primarily Scandinavian hospitals and in some cases, teams from other countries. The transports are mainly done by aircraft and under quite specific conditions in order for the organs not to be injured. The team, which counts from two to ten people, carry special equipment and a special container in which the organs are kept during the transport back to the receiving hospital," says May Furuli.

In order to secure a successful organ transport, many elements must fall completely into place. These transports often take place at night. This demands a good overview of the qualified flight operators who are experienced in making this type of transports, and GMS/SOS Medical posesses that expertise. All details and possible scenarios are reviewed in order to make sure that no time is wasted. Everything must be in place when the team arrives at the destination and when the team leaves the destination again.

¨E.g. we need to know how we open an airport out of ordinary opening hours. From our centre we coordinate it directly with the flight operator and the airport, and make sure that the airport is ready for the team to arrive, in order for ambulances or taxi to be admitted into the airport and all the way to the aircraft," May Furuli explains.

¨It is the trip back to the receiving hospital and the time up until the organ can be inserted, that is critical. It is all about doing it in the shortest time possible. Here our job is to make sure that the aircraft is ready and that the engines are running when the team arrives. When the transplant teamland at the destination, transportation should also be ready and waiting. And when ground transportation carries heart and lungs, it must be under the flashing blue lights of an ambulance," May Furuli says.

The organs are collected at various hospitals in Norway and other places in Scandinavia. But there may also be transports to and from Iceland, Germany, England or Lithuania. That depends on the time the organs can keep in the transport container untill they are to be inserted into the receiving body. The hospitals send out the teams via their own coordinators with contact to SOS Medical, who makes sure that all parts are updated on the team's time assessment.

¨When we talk about transplants there are numerous elements of uncertainty. Our task is to ensure that the transport is not one of them, May Furuli concludes.