Abstract

Background:Non-heart beating donor kidneys increase transplant activity, but their use is associated with a higher rate of both primary non-function and delayed graft function than cadaveric kidneys, due to a period of cold ischaemic damage superimposed on a period of warm ischaemia. We aimed to measure intra-renal resistance in machine perfused porcine kidneys subjected to different periods of warm ischaemic injury, with additional, varying, cold ischaemic times, in an attempt to mimic the injury suffered by NHBD kidneys and test the predictive power of viability testing.Material/Methods:Landrace pigs were killed by lethal injection, and the kidneys were subjected to varying WITs of 10–90 minutes prior to explantation. Kidneys were subsequently stored for varying cold times of 2 to 48 hours. IRR (pressure/flow) was calculated during 6 hours cold pulsatile machine perfusion.Results:For all WITs, IRR was higher at the start than at the end of machine perfusion (P

Keywords: Cryopreservation, Ischemia, Kidney - physiology, Kidney Transplantation, Organ Preservation, Statistics, Swine, Temperature, Time Factors, Tissue and Organ Harvesting