Prolonged rat cardiac preservation with UW lactobionate solution.

T HE MOST significant limiting factor in the further expansion of clinical cardiac transplantation consists of the availability of suitable donors and the duration of viability of the organ following harvest. Currently, the safe limits of static cold cardiac preservation are considered to be four to six hours using the standard Stanford preservation solution as listed in Table 1. Belzer and colleagues have developed a preservation solution known as the University of Wisconsin (UW) lactobionate cold-storage solution (Table 1) which has demonstrated consistent 72 hour and 30 hour or longer preservation of the pancreas and liver, respectively. I Prompted by these successes and significant advances in static cold preservation, we compared UW-solution and the traditional Stanford solution for cardiac preservation in a heterotopic heart transplant model in rats. Additional pharmacologic manipulation with an antagonist of PlateletActivating Factor (PAF), which has been shown to ameliorate ischemic liver injury/ and with an oxygen free radical scavenger (SOD) were evaluated.