Morphological researches on lung preservation with a modified University of Wisconsin solution containing gelatine polypeptides (Haemaccel)

University of Wisconsin solution (U.W.S.) has prolonged hypotermic preservation of liver and kidney. This solution has been afterwards tested for heart and lung preservation. The high-potassium content and viscosity of the solution suggested to us to bring some modifications: addition of plasma expanders, aprotinin and an increased concentration of gluthatione. We studied the effect of this original solution using an animal model: 10 males adult Yuchatan micro-pig, undergoing excision of the heart-lung block. A morphological study of preserved lung was performed, then we compared the effect of standard UW solution and our modified solution. The cyto-histological findings, at different preservation times, showed that superior results have been obtained with the modified UW solution, such as better hematic wash-out from the pulmonary vessels and milder vasoconstriction in the pulmonary artery bed. Using our solution we observed a satisfactory preservation of pulmonary endothelium and bronchial epithelium respectively after 8 and 12 hours of hypotermic ischemia. This was the first step of our research; in a further study we shall perform the single-lung transplantation in a micro-pig model, to report a functional in vivo evaluation of the clinical applicability and quality of our solution for lung preservation