Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 7, 2026
Thermal Preconditioning During Ex-vivo Lung Perfusion for the Rehabilitation of Damaged Lung Grafts before Transplantation
Published on: October 31, 2025
Effects of deep hypothermic preservation on posttransplant viability of tracheal grafts
1Thoracic Surgery Unit, Hospital Universitario Insular of Gran Canaria, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain.
Objective:
Using an animal model, we performed a study to assess the effects of rapid freezing in the absence of cryoprotectants on the viability of tracheal grafts after allotransplantation.
Materials And Methods:
Ten tracheal heterotopic transplantations were performed with fresh grafts just after harvesting donors, and 20, with cryopreserved specimens at 2 or 6 weeks after hypothermic storage. Cryopreservation consisted of rapid cooling in the absence of cryoadditives with storage for 2 weeks at -80°C. After rewarming, grafts were transplanted into the abdominal cavity of immunosuppressed rats by being embedded into the greater omentum. Fourteen days later, the implants were removed to examine chondrocyte viability, submucosal swelling, and epithelial patterns in comparison with fresh controls.
Results:
All allografts retained their macroscopic structure after transplantation. Respiratory epithelium was substituted by planar epithelium only in the frozen transplanted specimens. Fresh transplanted grafts exhibited 100% chondral viability in contrast with 5% viability observed among cryopreserved tracheas after transplantation.
Conclusions:
The method of rapid freezing was effective to preserve airway grafts. However, the quality of cryopreserved cartilage was disappointing, similar to that obtained using conventional slow-freezing protocols.
