Pancreas transplantation improves and extends the life of patients with insulin‐dependent diabetes. Pancreata from extended criteria donors have been increasingly used due to the scarcity of available grafts. Normothermic ex situ pancreas perfusion (NESPP) can keep grafts metabolically active, potentially allowing for assessment and organ repair, and could improve outcomes of marginal grafts. A novel NESPP technique was developed and tested. Porcine pancreata were removed after a short period of warm ischemia and subjected to 6 h of NESPP. Perfusion parameters, potential graft assessment markers and graft injury were measured. Next, pancreata subjected to 3 h of NESPP were transplanted and animals were followed for up to 3 days. Graft function and injury post‐transplantation were evaluated. Using this novel system of perfusion, pancreata were perfused for an extended period of time with minimal edema. Histology at the end of perfusion showed intact islet cells with only mild signs of tissue injury. NESPP transplanted grafts showed immediate function after transplantation, with glucose levels in normal range. NESPP maintains a physiologic environment and excellent graft function without causing significant graft injury. Porcine pancreas transplantation is feasible and allows for in vivo graft assessment of pancreas function and injury after NESPP.

No abstract

Pancreas transplantation (PTx) is a curative treatment for people who live with the burden of a diagnosis of diabetes mellitus (DM). However, due to organ shortages and increasing numbers of patients being listed for PTx, new strategies are needed to increase the number of available grafts for transplantation.Static cold storage (SCS) is considered the gold standard for standard criteria organs.However, standard criteria donors (SCD) are becoming scarce and new strategies that can increase the rate of organ acceptance from extended criteria donors (ECD) are urgently needed.Normothermic ex vivo perfusion (NEVP) is one of the strategies that has become increasingly popular over the past couple of decades. This preservation method has already been used successfully in other organs (liver, kidneys, and lungs) but has been minimally explored in pancreas transplantation. The few papers that describe the method for pancreas show little success, edema being one of the major issues. The following manuscript describes the successful NEVP method and setup developed by our group to perfuse swine pancreas.

No abstract