Design, fabrication and testing of a novel vascular coupling device

In this work, an innovative vascular coupling device (VCD) is created to realize quick and reliable vessel anastomosis. Vessel anastomosis is common and often necessary during trauma, replantation and free tissue transfer surgeries. The current method of vessel anastomosis is traditional hand suturing. This technique is time consuming (20-30 min), difficult, and requires complex instruments. Additionally, it requires very skilled surgeons to efficiently perform the operation. To improve the reliability and reduce the amount of time required to connect two vessels, while providing an intima-to-intima anastomosis with no foreign material in contact with the blood flow, as occurs with sutures, a series of VCDs ranging from 1.5 mm to 7 mm inner diameter are designed and fabricated from polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) using laser cutting. A set of installation tools are also designed and fabricated to facilitate the VCD application. A series of experiments to test the VCD functionality are performed using both latex tubes and arteries. The results showed that the anastomosis process using VCDs and the installation tools can be completed in 5 min. The coupled VCDs can withstand 20 N tensile force, which is much higher than normal physiology conditions. There is no leakage or significant effects of the VCDs on the flow. A Micro-CT scan and histology images of cadaver arteries coupled with VCDs demonstrated that the VCD keeps the vessels open and does not constrict blood flow, suggesting that the VCD could be used in more advanced testing.