ORIGINAL ARTICLES   

International Angiology 2000 September;19(3):280-284

Copyright © 2001 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

language: English

Submucosa of canine small intestine as an alternative medium-diameter autogenous arterial graft

Baltoyannis G., Mitsis M., Nathanael C., Batsis C., Pappas S., Nastos D., Kappas A. M.

From the Department of Surgery and *Department of Cardiology, School of Medicine, Ioannina University, Ioannina, Greece

Back­ground. Small intes­ti­nal ­canine sub­mu­co­sa has been used in pre­vi­ous stud­ies as a large diam­e­ter arte­ri­al graft and has shown accept­able paten­cy rates. The aim of our experi­men­tal study was to ­assess its effec­tive­ness when it is used as an autog­e­nous medi­um-sized diam­e­ter arte­ri­al graft (5-7 mm).
Meth­ods. Fif­teen mon­grel dogs were includ­ed and under­went lap­a­rot­o­my under gen­er­al anaesthe­sia. The muco­sa, tuni­ca mus­cu­lar­is and sero­sa were ­removed from a resect­ed intes­ti­nal seg­ment. The remain­ing tube, which con­sist­ed of the sub­mu­co­sa and the bas­i­lar tuni­ca muco­sa, rep­re­sent­ed the experi­men­tal graft which was used to ­replace a pro­por­tion­al gap of the ­canine infra­ren­al aorta. Ascer­tain­ment of periph­er­al puls­es, meas­ure­ment of the intra-aor­tic pres­sures, aor­tog­ra­phy and in vivo/in situ obser­va­tion ­before the sac­ri­fice of the ani­mals, were the pro­ce­dures used for ver­ifi­ca­tion of the ­graft’s paten­cy.
­Results. The resis­tance to throm­bog­e­nic­ity of the graft was con­sid­ered sat­is­fac­to­ry: nine out of 10 ­grafts ­remained pat­ent for post­op­er­a­tive inter­vals rang­ing from one day to one year; one graft ­showed par­tial obstruc­tion due to a tech­ni­cal per­i­op­er­a­tive error. The ­grafts ­showed also excel­lent phys­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics (ease of han­dling and sutur­ing, blood imperme­abil­ity and dur­abil­ity), resis­tance to infec­tion and ­showed no ten­den­cy to devel­op myoin­ti­mal hyper­pla­sia.
Con­clu­sions. Small intes­ti­nal ­canine sub­mu­co­sa ­showed sat­is­fac­to­ry hae­mod­y­nam­ic prop­er­ties, long-term paten­cy and resis­tance to infec­tion, when used as a medi­um-diam­e­ter arte­ri­al sub­sti­tute.