[The experimental study for autoperfused heart-lung preservation--evaluation of pulmonary function after...

Although various methods for keeping long term good pulmonary function have so far been studied, no reliable method for heart-lung preservation has been established yet. Recently, we aimed at heart-lung preservation using the autoperfusion method and mainly examined pulmonary function after transplantation. After preserving heart-lung organ blocks extracted from mongrel dogs by autoperfusion method, 10 left lungs (preserved for 6.8 +/- 0.8 h) were orthotopically transplanted and combined heart-lung transplantation was performed under extracorporeal circulation using 5 heart-lung grafts (preserved for 7.5 +/- 0.5 h). All of lung-transplanted dogs were alive; preserved lungs showed good gas exchange power from immediately after transplantation. Left lungs on the 3rd day showed normal histological findings and chest X-P also revealed good pneumatization of transplanted lungs. The heart-lung transplantation enabled 4 cases to be free from extracorporeal circulation and arterial blood gas analysis also revealed good results [PO2 396.5 +/- 34.7 mmHg, PCO2 35.5 +/- 6.9 mmHg (FiO2 1.0)]. Lung tissue findings after 6 hours from the above freedom showed slight edema alone. The above results suggested the effectiveness of the autoperfusion method for heart-lung preservation.