The simple maneuver to safely extend the anhepatic time to 30 minutes for rat liver transplantation
Abstract Background Orthotopic rat liver transplantation (OLT) is widely used; it remains to be challenging although many renovations have been made. Methods For tolerance induction, we performed OLT including whole graft OLT from close Sprague Dawley (SD) rat to SD (whole graft group, control group, n = 21) and 30 minute anhepatic time (AHT) group (AHT group, n = 11). For good outcomes of AHT group and generalization of this maneuver, partial OLT was performed from 50% Lewis allograft to Brown Norway (BN) rats to induce tolerance (half graft group, n = 28), Cyclosporine A was injected once daily for 14 days. Results For whole graft group, 30-day survival rate was 85.5% (18/21), the reasons of death were gas embolism due to the missed suturing in 2 cases, blood loss in 1 case. For AHT group and tolerance group, 30-day survival rate was 72.7% (8/11), 64.3% (18/28), the causes of death were diverse. There were no differences in survival in 3 groups (p = 0.289). Conclusion The anhepatic time can be extended simply through the change of clamping the diaphragm, which facilitates its application in the research.