Local perivascular delivery of anti-restenotic agents from a drug-eluting poly(ε-caprolactone) stent cuff

The introduction of drug-eluting stents (DES) to prevent in-stent restenosis is one of the major advances in interventional cardiology. Currently many types of DES are under evaluation for effectiveness and safety, a time-consuming and difficult procedure in humans. An animal model that allows rapid evaluation of the present and upcoming...

Beta-blocking therapy in patients with the Marfan syndrome and entire aortic replacement

Objective: β-blocking therapy is the standard therapy in non-operated Marfan patients, however its efficacy after entire aortic replacement is unknown. The aim of this study was to describe the influence of (nearly) entire aortic replacement and β-blocking therapy on blood pressure and wave reflections in Marfan patients. Methods: Four Marfan...

Ingrowth of aorta wall into stent grafts impregnated with basic fibroblast growth factor: A porcine in vivo study of blood vessel prosthesis healing

Objective: Endovascular aneurysm repair is an alternative treatment of abdominal aortic aneurysm. The procedure is less invasive, and morbidity and most probably mortality are reduced. However, some problems, such as endoleakage, are yet to be resolved. Endoleakage can occur after graft migration, as a result of insufficient fixation of the...

Ingrowth of aorta vascular cells into basic fibroblast growth factor-impregnated vascular prosthesis material: A porcine and human in vitro study on blood vessel prosthesis healing

Objective: One of the most life-threatening vascular diseases is rupture of an abdominal aneurysm. The conventional treatment is based on surgical reconstruction. An alternative treatment is endovascular aneurysm repair (EVAR). Despite many advantages, one of the problems of EVAR is endoleakage from deficient healing between the aortic neck and...

Evaluation of various methods to quantify endothelial cells attached to vascular prostheses: Comparison with a new "gold standard" FACS method

For in vitro evaluation of functional properties of endothelial cells seeded on synthetic vascular prostheses accurate and reproducible quantification of cells is mandatory. Comparison of these properties with those resulting from other studies requires correlation of the functional parameters to reliably counted cell numbers. The accuracy of...