THE INFLUENCE OF PREOPERATIVE DONOR FACTORS ON THE PERFORMANCE OF THEISOLATED-PERFUSED HUMAN PANCREAS

The present study was undertaken to determine whether there exist spec ific donor factors which influence the performance of the isolated per fused human pancreas with respect to the sustained level of insulin se cretion. Donor factors included age, serum glucose, hospital days, CMV status, RBC transfusion history, and smoking history. Following pancr eas procurement, single-pass perfusion was performed in pancreata obta ined from 35 cadaveric organ donors using a modified Krebs buffer. Ali quots were collected every 2 min and assayed for insulin concentration . Data was analyzed for 120 min for each pancreas. The mean initial in sulin concentration was 2989 +/- 383 mu U/ml and the insulin concentra tion at 120 min averaged 1467 +/- 338 mu U/ml. The mean decay of insul in secretion over time was -13 +/- 3.2 mu U/ml/min. Multiple regressio n analysis demonstrated that pancreata from donors who had a smoking h istory had a faster rate of decay of insulin secretion than pancreata from nonsmokers (P = 0.04). None of the other above mentioned donor fa ctors significantly affected decay of insulin secretion. This analysis suggests that a history of smoking in organ donors results in a signi ficantly faster rate of decay of insulin secretion when the pancreas i s utilized for the laboratory model. We conclude that it is important to evaluate specific donor factors of cadaveric organ donors prior to the use of the human organs for experimental purposes. (C) 1994 Academ ic Press, Inc.