Heparin and phentolamine combined, rather than heparin alone, improves hepatic microvascular procurement in a non‐heart‐beating donor rat‐model

Improvement of organ procurement from non‐heart‐beating donors (NHBDs) could increase the donor organ pool for liver transplantation. Whether anti‐coagulative and anti‐vasospastic substances can improve hepatic microvascular preservation from NHBDs is unknown. In donor rats which were pretreated with either heparin ( n = 6) or heparin combined with phentolamine ( n = 7) 10 min prior to cardiac arrest, the extent and homogeneity of hepatic microvascular reperfusion was assessed at the end of a 60‐min period of cardiac arrest using in situ fluorescence microscopy. Non‐pretreated animals with cardiac arrest for 60 min served as controls ( n = 6). In the non‐treated NHBDs, arterial gravity perfusion of 100 cm H 2 O with HTK‐solution led to a hepatic acinar reperfusion of only ‐ 22% with a remarkably diminished sinusoidal density. Application of heparin prior to cardiac arrest resulted in a two‐fold, but insignificant increase of acinar perfusion and sinusoidal density with a still considerable heterogeneity of both parameters. Livers of NHBDs that additionally received phentolamine exhibited significantly increased values of both acinar perfusion and sinusoidal density. Phentolamine was found to reduce heterogeneity of organ microperfusion. Thus, our results indicate that the combined application of heparin and phentolamine is a useful additive for optimizing the quality of organs harvested from NHBDs.