Heart transplantion in rats

surgical complications and allograft survival

Abstract

The aim of this research was to study the technical aspects of cardiac allotransplant in rats according to the method described by Ono & Lindsey. It was used Holtzman rats as recipients and Wistar rats as donors. We carried out 56 transplants. In 41 (73%) recipients the surgery gave excellent results, while in 15 (28%) the heart allograft was lost due to technical failure: excessive bleeding (6/15), venous thrombosis (2/15), arterial thrombosis (2/15) and lack of beating (5/15). The mean time of total ischaemia was 57,6 minutes. The vascular anastomosis was done in 44,6 minutes as a mean time. The diagnosis of cardiac rejection was done when the palpation of the abdomen recipient’s showed lack of heart beating. The mean of survival time of cardiac allotransplant was 10,4 days. Histology of transplanted hearts removed after diagnosis of rejection exhibited typical immunologic injury (augmentation of heart size, oedema, necrosis of muscle fibers, infiltration by immunocompetent cells).