Pancreatic preservation in a multiorgan procurement procedure and transplantation.

U M LTIORGAN harvesting for individual organ transplantation is well defined according to the principles of Starzl. However, some pancreatic transplant surgeons believe the pancreas should not suffer hyperperfusion as occurs in multiorgan harvesting. This is in conflict with the need of all donor organs for transplantation and specially when multivisceral transplantation is planned. We believe that the pancreas is not so sensitive to high-volume flushing: most pancreata are harvested from multiorgan donors with good functional results. Even when flushing to the pan-creas in the adult donor is only 2 L, severe allograft pancreatitis has been reported in multivisceral transplantation. There must be some other etiologic factors of pancreatic preservation injury, namely warm ischemia and preservation time. We studied the quality of pancreas preservation in a multiorgan conventional preservation and orthotopic multivisceral transplantation technique.