[Harvesting the heart for preparation of heart valve allografts]

Allograft heart valves (AHV) are believed to be optimal prosthetic material for surgical aortic valve and/or root replacement and an ideal valved conduit for repair of some complex congenital heart defects. At the University Hospital Motol AHV were clinically used since 1983 (annually no more than twenty were collected). 1991 the Paediatric Transplant Centre was established and was entrusted to organise cadaveric hearts harvesting and to introduce the standard technology of AHV processing and banking. The results of co-operation with other Transplants Centres, as well as with coroners and forensic medicine specialists in 1992-1995 are presented. For the AHV processing 274 cadaveric hearts were collected in the Czech and Slovak Republics, 32 of them (11.7%) came from routine post-mortem and 242 (88.3%) were retrieved from multiorgan harvesting, 14 hearts were excluded for technical reasons and another five for the seropositivity of the donor (three HBSAg, one HCV and one VDRL). Another 14 AHV were not suitable for clinical use because of a congenital lesion (bicuspid aortic valve) or acquired pathology found during the AHV processing (advanced atherosclerosis) or retrospectively diagnosed at donors post-mortem (in vivo undiagnosed malignancy). The technology of processing, cryopreservation and banking of AHV as well as the clinical use of the tissue will be discussed separately.