[Ischemia-reperfusion injury during experimental heart transplantation. Evaluation of trimetazidine's cytoprotective effect].

Introduction And Objectives: The objectives of this study were to analyze the ischemia-reperfusion injury due to free radicals that occurs during heart transplantation and to determine the potential cytoprotective effect of trimetazidine.

Material And Method: A total of 21 orthotopic heart transplantations were performed in pigs. We divided the experimental animals into 2 groups: in group A (n=11),standard myocardial protection was used; in group B (n=10), trimetazidine was added to the cardioplegic solution used to protect the donor heart and to the solution administered to the recipient prior to release of the aortic clamp (trimetazidine, 10(-5) mol/L), and recipients were pretreated with trimetazidine, 2.