The effect of blood cells retained in rat livers during static cold storage on viability outcomes during normothermic machine perfusion

In transplantation, livers are transported to recipients using static cold storage (SCS), whereby livers are exposed to cold ischemic injury that contribute to post-transplant risk factors. We hypothesized that flushing organs during procurement with cold preservation solutions could influence the number of donor blood cells retained in the allograft thereby exacerbating cold ischemic injury. We present the results of rat livers that underwent 24 h SCS after being flushed with a cold University of Wisconsin (UW) solution versus room temperature (RT) lactated ringers (LR) solution. These results were compared to livers that were not flushed prior to SCS and thoroughly flushed livers without SCS. We used viability and injury metrics collected during normothermic machine perfusion (NMP) and the number of retained peripheral cells (RPCs) measured by histology to compare outcomes. Compared to the cold UW flush group, livers flushed with RT LR had lower resistance, lactate, AST, and ALT at 6 h of NMP. The number of RPCs also had significant positive correlations with resistance, lactate, and potassium levels and a negative correlation with energy charge. In conclusion, livers exposed to cold UW flush prior to SCS appear to perform worse during NMP, compared to RT LR flush.