Original articleGeneral thoracicTracheal Replacement With a Silicone-Stented, Fresh Aortic Allograft in Sheep
Section snippets
Material and Methods
The study was approved by the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center's Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee. All animals were cared for by a veterinarian in accordance with US Department of Agriculture regulations and the Guidelines for the Care and Use Committee of Laboratory Animals of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the National Research Council's Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, prepared by the Institute of Laboratory Animals and published by the National
Morbidity and Mortality
A summary of the results is given in Table 1. All sheep tolerated the surgical procedure well and there was no perioperative mortality. However, 6 of 10 sheep (60%) had complications. Sheep 1 had severe tracheitis, which did not respond to medication. As a result, sheep 1 was euthanized on postoperative day 12. In sheep 3, the CT scan performed at 3 months revealed that the silicone stent had migrated to the proximal trachea (Fig 1A). The migrated stent was removed with a rigid bronchoscope,
Comment
Several approaches to tracheal reconstruction using a graft interposition have been reported with limited success [2]. Tracheal regeneration after fresh aortic allograft without immunosuppressive therapy has been reported by two groups [4, 7]. These reports seemed to be breakthroughs in this field. We therefore sought to replicate the results and to begin to understand the sequence of events resulting in tracheal regeneration from the aortic construct. If successful, we had subsequent plans to
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