Abstract
This study was designed to evaluate the possibility of successful liver transplantation from non-heart-beating donors (NHBD) by core cooling technique (CCT). Anesthetized pigs were subjected to varying periods of cardiac arrest (CA) followed by reoxygenation and cooling by cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB), i. e. CCT. In the orthotopic liver transplantation model, recipient pigs survived for more than four days when livers were harvested by CCT from NHBD, which had been subjected to relatively short periods (less than 20 minutes) of CA. On the other hand, all the recipients died when livers were removed by currently-used flush technique (FT) from NHBD, regardless of the duration of CA. Those survival rates correlated well with the recovery of Energy Charge and Oxygen Consumption of the livers. Continuous oxygenation of organs by CCT appeared to play a major role in recovery of liver viability from ischemic insults.
