Woven vascular microsurgical prostheses in our experimental practice

The authors have been concerned for six years with the development of woven microsurgical prostheses in experiments on laboratory rats, beagle dogs and domestic white pigs. In rats, in 224 experiments employing 38 types of prostheses with an inner diameter of 2 mm, a reliable prosthesis was selected, described as No. 36, with a 100% patency after insertion of a 1 cm long portion into a defect in the abdominal aorta in 40 experiments. The follow-up of this type of prosthesis lasted 12 months. In large animals this type of prosthesis was implanted into a defect of the radial artery and cephalic vein in dogs and into the femoral artery and the artery of a vascular pedicle of groin and lateral thigh flap. These experiments on large animals are not yet complete and will be the subject of a separate paper.