Search results for "blood vessel substitutes"

Poly lactic acid based scaffolds as graft for small-diameter arterial replacement.

2012

Vascular Tissue engineering (VTE) has emerged as a promising approach to develop blood vessel substitutes. Investigators have explored the use of arterial tissue cells combined with various types of natural and synthetic scaffolds to make tubular constructs in order to develop a functional small-diameter arterial replacement graft. The grafts must mimic the unique viscoelastic nature of an artery and be non-disruptive to blood ?ow. Moreover, after implantation, the scaffold must be gradually populated by cells and replaced by extra cellular matrix; with this respect, it is crucial that this replacement takes place with a well-defined timescale. In this work tubular scaffolds for VTE were pr…