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Background: A major limitation in expanding the use of donation after circulatory death (DCD) livers in transplantation is the increased risk of graft failure secondary to ischemic cholangiopathy. Warm ischemia causes thrombosis and injury to the peribiliary vascular plexus (PVP), which is supplied by branches of the hepatic artery, causing higher rates of biliary complications in DCD allografts.Aims/Objectives: We aimed to recondition discarded DCD livers with tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) while on normothermic machine perfusion (NMP) to improve PVP blood flow and reduce biliary injury.Methods: Five discarded DCD human livers underwent 12 h of NMP. Plasminogen was circulated in the base perfusate prior to initiation of perfusion and 1 mg/kg of tPA was administered through the hepatic artery at T = 0.5 h. Two livers were split prior to perfusion (S1, S2), with tPA administered in one lobe, while the other served as a control. The remaining three whole livers (W1-W3) were compared to seven DCD control liver perfusions (C1-C7) with similar hepatocellular and biliary viability criteria. D-dimer levels were measured at T = 1 h to verify efficacy of tPA. Lactate, total bile production, bile pH, and difference in biliary injury scores before and after perfusion were compared between tPA and non-tPA groups using unpaired, Mann-Whitney tests.Results: Average weight-adjusted D-dimer levels were higher in tPA livers in the split and whole-liver model, verifying drug function. There were no differences in perfusion hepatic artery resistance, portal vein resistance, and arterial lactate between tPA livers and non-tPA livers in both the split and whole-liver model. However, when comparing biliary injury between hepatocellular and biliary non-viable whole livers, tPA livers had significantly lower PVP injury scores (0.67 vs. 2.0) and mural stroma (MS) injury scores (1.3 vs. 2.7).Conclusion: This study demonstrates that administration of tPA into DCD livers during NMP can reduce PVP and MS injury. Further studies are necessary to assess the effect of tPA administration on long term biliary complications.

Background:Ex situ donor liver machine perfusion is a promising tool to assess organ viability prior to transplantation and platform to investigate novel therapeutic interventions. However, the wide variability in donor and graft characteristics between individual donor livers limits the comparability of results. We investigated the hypothesis that the development of a split liver ex situ machine perfusion protocol provides the ideal comparative controls in the investigation of machine perfusion techniques and therapeutic interventions, thus leading to more comparable results.Methods: Four discarded human donor livers were surgically split following identification and separation of right and left inflow and outflow vessels. Each lobe, on separate perfusion machines, was subjected to normothermic perfusion using an artificial hemoglobin-based oxygen carrier solution for 6 h. Metabolic parameters as well as hepatic artery and portal vein perfusion parameters monitored.Results: Trends in hepatic artery and portal vein flows showed a general increase in both lobes throughout each perfusion experiment, even when normalized for tissue weight. Progressive decreases in perfusate lactate and glucose levels exhibited comparable trends in between lobes.Conclusion: Our results demonstrate comparability between right and left lobes when simultaneously subjected to normothermic machine perfusion. In the pre-clinical setting, this model provides the ideal comparative controls in the investigation of therapeutic interventions.

Livers removed during transplant hepatectomies could represent a useful anatomic ex vivo resource for surgical training, since they are intact and not altered by post-mortem changes yet. The aim of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of such kind of surgical training applied on some hepatic surgery techniques. In the present paper, we focused on split liver operation and middle hepatic vein (MHV) bipartition/reconstruction, since these procedures have a quite long learning curve. Seven native livers were submitted to split liver procedure by a senior resident assisted by a fully trained hepatic surgeon. Pre-splitting ultrasound mapping was compared to pre-operative CT scan. The whole graft was divided into two hemi-livers and the MHV into two hemi-confluents and reconstructed by venous or arterial patches obtained by deceased donor iliac homograft. Water tightness of the anastomosis was confirmed by hydro-pneumatic test and bench portal perfusion. Reduction in operating time was considered an indirect indicator of surgical skill improvement. In all cases, the US confirmed the anatomical distribution of MHV tributaries observed by pre-transplant CT scan. The "ex situ" splitting procedures and MHV bipartition and reconstruction were performed in all native livers in the usual time required for liver transplantation bench surgery (range 50-75 min). Liver grafts removed during hepatectomy could represent a useful resource of intact organs to perform surgical training and boost surgical confidence. In our initial experience, the study of venous drainage of the MHV and application of liver splitting technique and MHV reconstruction resulted technically feasible.