Editorial Ischemia/Reperfusion Injury, Its Mechanisms, and Prevention

Copyright © 2012 Maciej Kosieradzki et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Since the beginning of transplantation era, ischemia/ reperfusion injury (IRI) has remained one of the most serious pitfalls of the procedure. Although thousands of scientific studies and analyses have been published, and mechanisms of the injury recognized and described, the most serious step forward to avoid the IRI was Geoffrey Collins ’ and Folkert Belzer’s invention of two different intracellular-type solutions in 1960s, which allowed for safe renal preservation exceeding 24 hours. Since then, no such important improvement took place and prevention of IRI remains a holy grail of transplantation, especially in thoracic and sub-optimal abdominal organs (fatty livers