SURVIVAL OF ARTERIES IN EXPERIMENTAL

Abstract

The literature concerned with the functional survival of blood vessels within an autotransplant of skin and their incorporation into the final vascular pattern of the tissue is briefly reviewed and the discrepancies in the results are noted. The experiments reported here indicate that substantial elements of the original graft vasculature can become incorporated into the vascular network of the recipient tissue, provided that local hemodynamic conditions are favorable. In these circumstances, large connecting vessels join major arteries of the graft with arteries of the surrounding tissue and blood flow through the grafted vessels is restored, sometimes after a considerable period of thrombotic occlusion. Whether or not original vessels partake in the final vascular network of freely autografted tissue is thus not an inherent characteristic of the graft as such but is dependent on local hemodynamic factors.