BACKGROUND: To analyze the profile of the most important Brazilian Transplant Centers regarding technical options in the pancreas transplant. METHODS: A query was sent by electronic mail for the 12 Brazilian Transplant Centers with at least one pancreas transplant performed. The query included ten questions approaching controversial and non-standard technical aspects. RESULTS: Midline abdominal incision is used in 90.9% of the Centers. The first organ to be implanted is the kidney in 63% of the Centers. Regarding the venous drainage, 90.9% perform systemic drainage. In 54.5% of the Centers the internal iliac vein is ligated. For combined pancreas-kidney transplant 90.9% of the teams perform enteric drainage. Five Centers answered about isolated pancreas transplant, two of them use enteric drainage and the other three prefer to utilize the bladder. 63% of the surgical teams use abdominal drain. 72.7% of the Centers adopt immunosupression induction for the combined pancreas-kidney transplant. The basic immunosuppression was an association between tacrolimus (FK506), and mofetil microfenolato (MMF), and corticoids. While antibiotic prophylaxis is performed in all the 12 Centers, fungus prophylaxis is routinely made in six of them. Eight Centers (72.7%) adopt vascular thrombosis prophylaxis by several different protocols. CONCLUSION: There are various technical medical protocols on how to conduct a pancreas transplant patient. The lack of homogeneity in the protocols makes it more difficult to analyze and compare the results. Nevertheless we can conclude that in combined pancreas-kidney transplant there is a preference towards midline abdominal incision, and vein systemic and enteric drainage, and vascular thrombosis prophylaxis.
Pancreas transplantation; Transplantation; Transplantation; Surgical procedures, operative
