Sa. Buchanan et al., PULMONARY-FUNCTION AFTER NON-HEART-BEATING LUNG DONATION IN A SURVIVAL MODEL, The Annals of thoracic surgery, 60(1), 1995, pp. 38-46
Background. Lung procurement from recently deceased cadavers has been
suggested to enlarge the limited donor pool. We hypothesized that lung
s harvested from non-heart-beating donors (NHBD) would function as wel
l as those harvested from heart-beating donors. Methods. Sixteen adult
swine underwent left lung allotransplantation. Controls received lung
s procured from heart-beating donors, NHBD pigs received lungs immedia
tely harvested from donors after death from asphyxiation, and NHBD-15
and NHBD-30 pigs received lungs harvested after 15 and 30 minutes afte
r asphyxiation. Results. After 1 week of survival, mean dynamic airway
compliance (mL/cm H2O +/- standard error of the mean) was 16.3 +/- 0.
7 in controls, and 17.3 +/- 1.0, 16.4 +/- 6.0, and 7.3 +/- 1.6 in the
NHBD, NHBD-15, and NHBD-30 groups, respectively (p = 0.02, NHBD-30 ver
sus others combined). No significant differences were noted in the pul
monary venous partial pressure of oxygen or pulmonary vascular hemodyn
amics compared with controls. Conclusions. The decrease in airway comp
liance noted in the NHBD-30 group may reflect an exacerbation of reper
fusion injury caused by 30 minutes of warm ischemia during organ retri
eval. We conclude that posttransplantation lung function using an NHBD
with up to 15 minutes of warm ischemia is equivalent to lung function
after heart-beating harvest.