Myocardial apoptosis and injury of donor hearts kept in completely beating status with normothermic blood perfusion for transplants.

Objective: Normothermic blood perfusion is the developing trend of donor heart preservation. Theoretically, donor hearts preserved in a beating status may be the perfect method to reduce time-dependent ischemic injury, resuscitate marginal hearts expanding the donor pool and potentially improve the function of isolated hearts. In this study, to investigate the protective effect of normothermic blood perfusion, we maintained the donor hearts in a beating status and compared the changes of myocardial apoptosis and injury with standard hypothermic and static storage.