Renal Transplantation by Automatic Anastomotic Device in a Porcine Model

Automatic vascular staplers for vascular anastomoses in kidney transplantation may dramatically reduce the operative time and, in particular, warm ischemia time, thus increasing the outcome of transplantation. Ten pigs underwent kidney auto-transplantation by automatic anastomotic device. Kidneys were collected by laparotomy with selective ligations at the renal hilum and perfused with cold storage solution. To overcome the shortage in length of renal hilum, a tract of the internal jugular vein was harvested to increase the length of the vessels. The anastomoses were totally performed by the use of the anastomotic device. On 10 kidney transplants, nine were successful and no complications occurred. Renal resistive indexes showed a slight increase in the immediate postoperative period returning normal at 10 days of follow-up. We demonstrated the possibility to perform renal vascular anastomoses by means of an automatic anastomotic device. This instrument developed for coronary bypass surgery by virtue of the small caliber of the vessels could be adopted on a larger scale for renal transplantation. The reduced warm ischemia time needed for anastomosis may help to achieve a better outcome for the graft and expand the pool of marginal donors in renal transplantation.