REVIEW  NEWEST EVIDENCE IN BIOMATERIALS FOR AORTIC AND VALVE GRAFTS 

The Journal of Cardiovascular Surgery 2020 October;61(5):538-43

DOI: 10.23736/S0021-9509.20.11592-1

Copyright © 2020 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

language: English

Current status on vascular substitutes

Anne LEJAY ^{1, 2, 3} ✉, Vincenzo VENTO ^{1, 2}, Salomé KUNTZ ^{1, 2}, Lydie STEINMETZ ^{1, 2}, Yannick GEORG ^{1, 2}, Fabien THAVEAU ^{1, 2}, Frédéric HEIM ⁴, Nabil CHAKFÉ ^{1, 2}

¹ Department of Vascular Surgery and Kidney Transplantation, University Hospital of Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France; ² Groupe Européen de Recherche sur les Prothèses Appliquées à la Chirurgie Vasculaire, Strasbourg, France; ³ Department of Physiology, University Hospital of Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France; ⁴ Laboratory of Physics and Textile Mechanics, Haute Alsace University, Mulhouse, France

In the last decades, the main evolution in the field of vascular surgery was correlated to the development and introduction of vascular substitutes. Currently, two types of synthetic vascular substitutes have been widely adopted: polyethylene terephthalate and expanded polytetrafluoroethylene. Ideally, they should demonstrate a behavior as close as possible as that of human arteries in terms of mechanical and biological properties. However, no vascular substitute has been found to compare with the patency rates of gold-standard autologous conduits, and major drawbacks of current vascular substitutes remain both thrombogenicity and infectability.

KEY WORDS: Blood vessel prosthesis; Thrombosis; Infections