Freezing of human kidneys: initial in vitro observations.

Five human cadaver kidneys not used for transplantation because of technical reasons were perfused-frozen-thawed-perfused in a sequential manner in order to determine their in vitro response to these various phenomena. No evidence of severe histological or electron microscopic damage was noted in two kidneys. The perfusion characteristics were recovered one to three hours after freezing and thawing. In a xenotransplant model, delayed perfusion was observed with recovery if some perfusion several minutes later. it is clear that more experimental freezing work is required to understand and improve that techniques utilized so far with almost no success.