Ann Thorac Surg 2005;79:1466
© 2005 The Society of Thoracic Surgeons
Correspondence
Neointima in Vascular Prostheses: The Jury is Still Out
Ares Protopapas, FRCS
Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, North Staffs, Stokes-upon-Trent, UKaristotelis.protopapas@ic.ac.uk
To the Editor:
I read with interest the study of reseeded left ventricular assist device (LVAD) cannulas in 2 patients [1]. The authors conclude that "synthetic matrices are not suitable scaffolds for generating functional cardiovascular implants."
I feel obliged to comment that their evidence should be weighed against that of substantial prospective studies in other mammals [2] and humans [3–5] that are more optimistic.
It is perhaps understandable that the biological milieu of a terminally ill pretransplant patient such as those studied by Walles and colleagues [1] is not appropriate for extrapolations in the field of bioengineering. Tissue engineering is progressing in leaps and bounds, however, and the quest for a hybrid vascular conduit cannot be refused by the circumstantial evidence reported by the authors.
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- Walles T, Görler H, Puschmann C, Mertsching H. Functional neointima characterization of vascular prostheses in human Ann Thorac Surg 2004;77:864-868.[Abstract/Free Full Text]
- Pasic M, Muller-Glauser W, von Segesser LK, Lachat M, Mihaljevic T, Turina MI. Superior late patency of small-diameter Dacron grafts seeded with omental microvascular cells: an experimental study Ann Thorac Surg 1994;58:677-684.[Abstract]
- Frechette E, Dion YM, Cardon A, Chakfe N, Doillon CJ. Fat- and bone marrow-impregnated small diameter PTFE grafts Eur J Vasc Endovasc Surg 1999;18:308-314.[Medline]
- Koyama M, Satoh K, Yoshida H, Suzuki S, Koie H, Takamatsu S. Surface coverage of vascular grafts with cultured human endothelial cells from subcutaneous fat tissue obtained with a biopsy needle Thromb Haemost 1996;76:610-614.[Medline]
- Zund G, Hoerstrup SP, Schoeberlein A, et al. Tissue engineering: a new approach in cardiovascular surgerySeeding of human fibroblasts followed by human endothelial cells on resorbable mesh. Eur J Cardiothorac Surg 1998;13:160-164.[Abstract/Free Full Text]
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