The effect of surgery and severe injury on blood vessels

This paper evolves from our previous work that developed a blood vessel model based on the way in which the total tension within the blood vessel wall varies with pressure due to the interaction of specific ions. We use the previous outcomes to examine the diameter of rat middle cerebral arteries (MCAs) as a function of pressure. The MCAs were isolated at 2 h, 1 and 5 days following sham injury and severe traumatic brain injury (TBI). First, we are able to quantify the diameter versus pressure curve in a way that yields three parameters. One of these parameters is the diameter at zero pressure that incorporates properties of the blood vessel walls and the vascular smooth muscle cells. The other two parameters are associated with the myogenic response and the myogenic tone. These parameters enable us to characterize, from the MCAs as a function of pressure in a calcium buffer, each blood vessel into one of three distinct distributions. One of these distributions reflects the optimum conditions. From our data with our blood vessel model, we demonstrate the effect of sham injury on the way in which blood vessels respond to pressure change that appears to recover over time with a half-life of about 40 h. In contrast, severe TBI greatly affects the blood vessel with no indication of recovery over the five-day monitoring period.