J.Jpn. Surg. Soc.. 80(3): 195-210, 1979

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Original article

EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES ON CADAVER PANCREAS PRESERVED BY PERFUSION

Pancreatic transplantation is most effective for the surgical therapy of the advanced diabetes mellitus. The technique is not so difficult, particularly on the transplantation of pancreatic islets and the possibility that immunological rejection might occur is considered to be very low.
However, the problem is that the living human pancrease cannot be used as donor because of its anatomization in clinical application, so that the cadaver pancreas might be used as donor instead.
In case of cadaver pancreas another problem is coming up that the pancreas has a rapid autolysis. So, the brain death is recommended as the most available condition for this transplantation.
In the present study I investigated the viability in vivo and in vitro of the guillotined cadaver pancreas of rats preserved by cold perfusion method (4°C).
The result obtained were as follows:
1) The perfusating time affected the degenerative islet/normal islet ratio. A large amount of degenerative islets appeared by long perfusion time.
2) Cold (4°C) perfusion method could preserve cadaver pancreas for 5 hours.
3) Insulin secretion of preserved cadaver pancreatic islets for 5 hours by cold perfusion was more 55% of that of normal pancreatic islets.
4) A 300 of islets of preserved cadaver pancreas for 5 hours by cold perfusion was transplanted into the portal vein of Streptozotocin diabetic rats. A 4/11 of diabetic rats recovered from diabetic states and maintained the non-diabetic states for following 20 weeks after transplantation.

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