Survival and repair of potentially lethal radiation damage in confluent vascular smooth muscle cell cultures

Confluent cultures of rat aortic smooth muscle cells demonstrated dose-dependent potentially lethal damage repair (PLDR), with an average repair factor of 4 for a 10 Gy dose. PLDR occurred with a half-time of 2 hours and was nearly maximal by 8 h. Among other factors, PLDR may contribute to the radioresistance of large blood vessels.