Tissue engineering of vascular bypass grafts: role of endothelial cell extraction.

Tiwari, A; Salacinski, H J; Hamilton, G; Seifalian, A M · Eur J Vasc Endovasc Surg · 2001

review · Level V

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Abstract

Surgical treatment of vascular disease has become common. The use of synthetic materials is limited to grafts larger than 5-6 mm, because of the frequency of occlusion observed with small-diameter prosthetics. An alternative would be a hybrid or tissue-engineered graft with the surface coated with a monolayer of the patients' own endothelial cells. This review examines the various techniques and technologies used to date in order to extract endothelial cells for such graft engineering.

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