Twenty-four-hour total small bowel hypothermic storage preservation and transplantation in the rat: a study of various preservation solutions.

Three hundred forty-eight Sprague Dawley rats were used as donors and recipients of fresh and preserved small bowel transplants in order to evaluate both the most important determinants of failure after preservation and transplantation, and the effect of various preservation solutions used for 24 h. Four different solutions were tested: saline for the control group, and Euro-Collins (EC), University of Wisconsin (UW), and albumin-dextran-adenosine-allopurinol-verapamil (ADAAV) for the experimental groups. The survival at 3 days was 80% for the control group, 66.6% for the ADAAV group, and 53.5 and 46.6% for the UW and EC groups, respectively (p < .05 saline vs EC, UW; p > .05 saline vs ADAAV). Another two groups received small bowels on which the effect of nonflushing was studied for 6 and 24 h. In general, laboratory and histologic studies did not show a significant difference among the various groups of preserved small bowels. The worst groups were the nonflushed preserved small bowels, in which no survival was obtained. Although some improvement was noted in early survival with the ADAAV solution, no true-long term survivors were seen in any of the preservation groups studied. Factors of preservation injury were related to hemorrhagic necrosis and sepsis in the majority of the experimental groups. Thus, there were no available preservation solutions that could give consistent results after 24 h of small bowel preservation in the rat.