PHENOMENON OF DEMIKHOV. "Transplantation of vital organs In experiment" (1960). Transplantation immunity, artifi cial circulation in organ transplantation

Abstract

The article (the fourth of five) presents the analysis of the 4th and 5th chapters from V.P.Demikhov's monograph "Transplantation of vital organs in experiment" (MedGIz Publisher, Moscow, 1960), where he described his studies of transplantation immunity in originally created models and his use of artificial blood-circulation systems in experimental organ transplantation. It has been shown that V.P.Demikhov changed his views on the tissue biological incompatibility in homoplastic transplants and turned from the Michurin-Pavlov's concepts (1946–1953) to natural-scientific views (1959). Meanwhile, his multiple attempts to study both the morphological and humoral immunological response to transplanted organs did not give conclusive results because of lacking the experience of such studies even in the country's leading scientists and due the imperfection of their techniques. Realizing that the retrieval of a beating heart from a human would have created further problems for its subsequent transplantation, V.P. Demikhov attempted to reanimate human hearts in corpses by means of extracorporeal devices to provide artificial circulation. Methodologically, those devices were based on S.S.Bryukhonenko's research and his "auto-injector" pump modified by V.P.Demikhov. However, by 1960, those studies had not come beyond the experiments.