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.