Assessment of tissue blood flow following small artery welding with an intraluminal dissolvable stent
✍ Scribed by Feng-Chun He; Li-Ping Wei; Marco Lanzetta; Earl R. Owen
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1999
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 127 KB
- Volume
- 19
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0738-1085
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Using the technique of radioactive 51 Cr-labeled biological microspheres, this study evaluated arterial blood flow following small vessel anastomosis by CO 2 laser welding and a dissolvable stent in the lumen. A total of 30 Sprague-Dawley rats were divided into two groups. Group A: 11 rats had their femoral arteries ligated on one side. The contralateral side served as a control, with the artery transected and repaired using conventional microsuturing. Group B: 19 rats had their femoral arteries transected and repaired using CO 2 laser welding and an intraluminal dissolvable stent technique. The contralateral side was again used as a control using conventional microsuturing. At 1 hr postoperatively, 51 Cr-labeled biological microspheres were injected centripetally into the left common carotid artery and the legs and thighs immediately harvested for measurement of radioactivity. All repaired arteries were patent (30/30 in the microsuturing group nd 19/19 in the stented welding group), with no detectable stenosis or dilation at the repaired site. Statistical analysis showed that tissue radioactivity (cpm/g) in the ligated group (3,972 ± 384 in thighs and 3,142 ± 742 in legs) was significantly lower than in the microsuturing group (7,132 ± 1,723 in thighs and 6,557 ± 1,469 in legs) (P < 0.01). In the ligated group, a significant reduction of blood flow was seen in the legs when compared with the thighs (P < 0.05). There was no significant difference in radioactivity when comparing the microsuturing control with the stented welding group, in both thighs (7,064 ± 2,599 and 7,006 ± 2,406, respectively; P > 0.05) and legs (6,386 ± 1,703 and 6,288 ± 1,757, respectively; P > 0.05). This study provided evidence that the dissolvable stent placed intraluminally does not impair blood circulation and that when coupled with CO 2 laser welding offers a high-quality alternative to conventional small vessel anastomosis.