Successful liver transplantation from agonal non-heart-beating donors in pigs.

Abstract

An effective way to overcome shortage of donors in liver transplantation (LTx) is to consider such from non-heart-beating donors (NHBDs). We investigated how a liver graft should be treated before and/or after procurement for successful LTx from an NHBD. Porcine LTx was performed with FR167653 (FR), a dual inhibitor of tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha) and interleukin-1beta (IL-1beta), and/or prostaglandin E(1) (PG). Animals were allocated to an FR group (n=4, donors and recipients were treated with FR), a PG group (n=4, donors and recipients were treated with PG), or an FRPG group (n=4, donors and recipients were treated with both FR and PG). No recipients in the FR group and only two of four recipients in the PG group survived, whereas all recipients in the FRPG group survived. Suppression of TNF-alpha and IL-1beta and maintenance of microcirculation are the key to successful transplantation from NHBDs.