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Copyright ©The Author(s) 2018. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Transplant. Apr 24, 2018; 8(2): 38-43
Published online Apr 24, 2018. doi: 10.5500/wjt.v8.i2.38
Anastomotic techniques for rat lung transplantation
Taufiek Konrad Rajab
Taufiek Konrad Rajab, Division of Cardiac Surgery, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, MA 02115, United States
Taufiek Konrad Rajab, Department of Surgery, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, United States
Author contributions: Rajab TK devised the new technical safeguards, performed the operations and reviewed the literature.
Conflict-of-interest statement: No potential conflicts of interest relevant to this article were reported.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Taufiek Konrad Rajab, MD, Division of Cardiac Surgery, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, 75 Francis Street, Boston, MA 02115, United States. trajab@bwh.harvard.edu
Telephone: +1-617-7325500 Fax: +1-617-9750848
Received: January 4, 2018
Peer-review started: January 4, 2018
First decision: February 9, 2018
Revised: March 6, 2018
Accepted: April 1, 2018
Article in press: April 1, 2018
Published online: April 24, 2018
Processing time: 109 Days and 22.7 Hours
Abstract

The first lung transplantation in the rat was achieved by Asimacopoulos et al using sutured anastomoses in 1971. Subsequent development of a cuffed technique to construct the anastomoses by Mizuta and colleagues in 1989 represented a breakthrough that resulted in simplification of the procedure and shorter warm ischemic times. Since then, a number of further variations on the technique of rat lung transplantation have been described. In spite of this, the procedure remains technically demanding and involves a long learning curve. This minireview describes the following new technical safeguards to further evolve the technique for cuffed anastomoses in rat lung transplantation: the use of anatomical landmarks to avoid twisting of the everted donor pulmonary vein and bronchus in the cuff, the use of the cuff tie as a landmark to avoid twisting of the anastomotic cuffs relative to the recipient vessels, distal ties on the recipient vessels to achieve a bloodless field and triangulation of the venotomy to avoid pulmonary vein tearing.

Keywords: Lung transplantation; Rat; Surgery; Animal experiments; Technique

Core tip: This minireview describes the following new technical safeguards to further evolve the technique for cuffed anastomoses in rat lung transplantation: the use of anatomical landmarks to avoid twisting of the everted donor pulmonary vein and bronchus in the cuff, the use of the cuff tie as a landmark to avoid twisting of the anastomotic cuffs relative to the recipient vessels, distal ties on the recipient vessels to achieve a bloodless field and triangulation of the venotomy to avoid pulmonary vein tearing.