Introduction
In 1967, Christian Bernard performed the first heart transplant using
donation after circulatory death
(DCD) technique.1 However, after the definition of
brain death was established, donation after brain death (DBD) has
dominated. The growing discrepancy between the available heart donors
and the number of patients awaiting heart transplant motivated surgeons
to extend the acceptance criteria for DBD hearts and re-explore
DCD.2 Warm ischemia time has pivotal impact on the
recipients’ survival who received hearts from DCD
donors.3 We have reported successful utilization of
the Foley catheter to flush the lungs during recovery from donors after
circulatory death with some modifications in both the technique and
preparation of the Foley catheter.4
We describe a fast and safe technique to flush the heart during recovery
from DCD donors to shorten the warm ischemia time using a modified Foley
catheter.