Banking cryopreserved heart valves in Europe: assessment of a 5-year operation in an international tissue bank in Brussels.

OBJECTIVE

The heart valve bank of the European Homograft Bank has been set up in 1988 to meet the growing demand of cardiac surgeons for various sized and quality controlled cryopreserved homografts.

METHODS

Heart valve donors less than 60 years of age were classified in 3 categories: multiorgan donors with non transplantable hearts, recipients of cardiac transplantation and non beating heart cadavers with a warm ischemic time of less than 6 hours. Past history and biology were checked for transmissible diseases. Preparation, progressive freezing and storage in liquid nitrogen vapors, and quality control were according to the standards of the Belgian Ministry of Health.

RESULTS

From end January 1989 to end May 1994, 989 homograft valves were cryopreserved (514 pulmonary, 475 aortic and 3 mitral) whereas 962 valves were discarded. The first cause of rejection being a major macroscopic lesion (41.48%). 138 hearts accepted at inspection were contaminated and 43 cases remained so after antibiotics. 38 cases were positive for hepatitis B or C. Complication at distribution and thawing included 10 instances of bag rupture and 15 of transversal fracture through the wall of the conduit. 477 aortic, 474 pulmonary valves as well as one mitral were implanted between May 1989 and May 1994, either for left or right ventricular outflow tract reconstruction. In the left ventricular outflow tract series 111 aortic and 23 pulmonary homograft valves were used in cases of native endocarditis, prosthetic endocarditis or recurrent endocarditis after homograft implantation. 9.6% of the requests could no be satisfied. Regular follow up information was available from 382 implants-40.1% only.

CONCLUSIONS

The assessment of 5 years operation of the heart valve bank indicates: 1) the efficiency of selecting, cryopreserving and allocating quality controlled homograft valves from a large pool of donor hearts provided by a network of hospitals; 2) the difficulty of obtaining regular follow up information on the implants.