Microvascular Permeability of the Non–Heart- Beating Rabbit Lung After Warm Ischemia and

Background. The duration of warm ischemia and reper-fusion injury is a major limiting factor in the setting of lung transplantation with non – heart-beating donors (NHBD). We hypothesized that reperfusion with neutro-phil elastase inhibitor or leukocyte-depleted blood has an inhibitory effect on the ischemia-reperfusion injury of NHBD rabbit lungs. Methods. To assess the lung injury, we used a perfused rabbit lung model and measured the hemodynamic pa-rameters and filtration coefficient. The rabbit lungs after hypoxic cardiac arrest for 30, 50, and 60 minutes were harvested at room temperature, and ventilated lungs were reperfused for 1 hour at a constant flow (120 mL/min). The group with 60 minutes of warm ischemia and hypoxia was further divided into three groups t