Preservation of cadaver of renal allografts: comparison of ice storage and machine perfusion.

Preservation of cadaveric renal allografts by ice storage and by machine perfusion after a preliminary flush with a hypertonic citrate solution has been compared in a prospective clinical trial between matched pairs of kidneys from the same cadaver donor. Over a two-year period, ice storage after flushing with the new solution gave results comparable with machine perfusion. Times of warm ischaemia and total times of storage were similar in ice-stored and machine-perfused kidneys and averaged about 16 hours. In each group of recipients, more than half of the kidneys had good early function and one-year survival times were also similar.