Preface - Ous-research.no

Experimental microsurgery and Transplantation
Leader:
Pål-Dag Line, MD, PhD, Chairman, Division of Specialiced
Medicine and Surgery, OUH.
Scientific staff:
Aksel Foss, Professor, MD, PhD, MHA,
Section for Transplantation Surgery (OUH/UiO)
Helge Scott, Professor, MD, PhD, Dept. of Pathology (OUH/UiO)
Bjarte Fosby,MD, Section for Transplantation Surgery,
PhD Student (OUH)
Jihua Shi, MD, Section for Transplantation Surgery, PhD
Student (OUH)
Henrik Huitfeldt, Professor, MD PhD Department of Pathology
(OUH/UiO)
Vivi Bull Stubberud, RN, OR Department (OUH)
Introduction
The research group is a collaborative project between the
Section for Transplant surgery at the Division of specialiced
Medicine and Surgery and the Institute of pathology. A
subset of various experimental transplantation models and
other surgical models have been established in order to
form a solid platform that allow us to explore our main fields
of interest within experimental transplantation, transplantation
immunology and hepatic regeneration and cancer.
Surgical models
In the cuff-based cervical heterotopic transplantation
technique we transplant the donor heart to the neck of the
recipient. Anastomoses between the graft aorta and the
carotid artery, and between the pulmonary artery and the
external jugular vein are cuffed as reported by Heron. A
transplanted heart is shown in figure 1.
Head of Department Pål-Dag Line
We have also established orthotopic liver transplantation
models in the rat. This is a non arterialized, model, where
the portal vein and the infrahepatic cava is anastomosed
by cuff technique whereas the proximal, suprahepatic cava
is sutured. The model is performed partly as a whole graft
transplant, but when indicated partial liver transplantation
of various size is achieved by performing lobar resections
on the graft.. The model can also be combined with portocaval
shunting, utilizing a carotid artery graft as a shunt.
Figure 2 (left) shows a
transplanted rat Liver
Firure 3 shows a portocaval
shunt where a carotid artery graft
is sutured end-to-side to the vena
porta and cava respectively.
Compared to conventional techniques of anastomosis the
cuff method reduces graft cold ischemia and bleeding from
the anastomoses. Another advantage with the method is
the superficial localization of the graft in the recipient’s neck
which simplifies registration
of graft function and
enables exact judgement of
endpoint for the rejection
process. Graft ischemia is
typically 5-10 min, and the
technical success rate above
90%.
Figure 1. Heart transplanted to
the neck of the recipient animal.
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