HEALING PROCESS AND LONG-TERM EVALUATION OF FABRIC VASCULAR PROSTHESES TRANSPLANTED WITH AUTOLOGOUS VENOUS TISSUE FRAGMENTS

Abstract

Fabric vascular prostheses transplanted with autologous venous tissue fragments showed extremely rapid healing of neointima in our previous study. In this communication, stability of the neointima in long-term was evaluated in an animal study. Highly porous fabric vascular prostheses (water porosity: 4, 000) were implanted into the descending aortae of 35 dogs, and were explanted from 1 hour to 495 days after implantation. A highly porous graft with preclotting was used as the control after the sealing by the original preclotting technique in 25 dogs (1 hour to 783 days). The neointima with the transplantation of autologous venous tissue fragments showed no degenerative changes such as calcification nor ulceration in the neointima. Control prostheses showed also no degenerative changes, however, in 9 out of 25 cases, hemothorax or perigraft hematomae were noticed. From these observations, stability of the neointima of fabric graft with autologous tissue fragments transplantation was confirmed clearly in this animal study.