Surgical Harvesting of Small Bowel Intended for Transplantation

Overview

The small intestine transplantations represent a logical alternative to final total parenteral nutrition in patients with chronic intestinal failures. It is considered a life- saving procedure in patients with intestinal failure, where standard treatment procedures cannot be further implemented. Perfect harvesting technique is very important for succesful clinical small bowel transplantation. The authors studied the surgical view of the small intestinal transplant harvesting and monitored differences in ischemic injuries to jejunum and ileum depending on duration of the cold ischemia time. The study is one of the inital works in the planned intestinal transplantation clinical programme.

Key words:
small intestine transplantation – surgical collection technique – ischemic injury