Abstract
A small caliber vascular graft was developed. The graft, which was made of modified carotid artery from animals, has enough compliant property like an ative artery. The soft graft wall showed easy puncturability with a 18 gauge needle and it took short bleeding time after the needle was removed. In general, biological materials for implantable artificial organs were crosslinked with glutaraldehyde (GA). The crosslinking with GA makes the materials insoluble, less biodegradable, and less antigenic, but its disadvantage is to make the materials more stubborn. We introduced a new hydrophilic crosslinking reagent, Polyepoxy Compounds (PC), instead of GA. After the crosslinking with PC, biological materials become white in color. Softness and elasticity of the original material could be preserved even after the crosslinking. The vascular graft developed was crosslinked with PC. The graft got high hydrophilic and elastic properties. Thirty-two grafts of 3.0 to 3.5mm in internal diameter and 6cm in length were implanted in both carotid arteries of 18 dogs. Each graft was punctured 5 times with a 18 gauge syringe needle after the implantation. The grafts were removed from 1 to 30 days after the surgery. The patency rate was 87.5%. The bleeding time after the needle was removed was 10min. 12sec. in average. Eight carotidartery grafts crosslinked with GA were adopted as control experiments. It showed 25% patency and 22min. 25sec. of the bleeding time. These results showed that the graft developed has an antithrombogenicity and puncturable property. Thus, the graft is very promissing as a A-V bypass graft for artificial kidney.
