Intimal hyperplasia, the obstacle in bypass grafts

The purpose of this thesis was to design new strategies to improve the patency of small diameter bypass grafts in the arte-rial circulation by reducing the formation of intimal hyperplasia. The following goals were formulated to evaluate the ef-ficacy of these new strategies: 1. To inventory the factors responsible for, and the strategies designed to control the formation of intimal hyperplasia in vein grafts in the arterial circulation. 2. To introduce a model to quantify early platelet and leucocyte deposition onto synthetic bypass grafts in vitro. 3. To evaluate the effect of periadventitial application of a sulfated carbohydrate polymer on the formation of intimal hy-perplasia in autologous vein graft in rab-bits. 4. To evaluate the effect of superhydro-phobic modification of small diameter ex-panded polytetrafluoroethy-lene vascular graft on platelet deposition and on the for-mation of intimal hyperplasia both in vivo and in vitro. 5. To evaluate the gastroepiploic artery as autologous bypass graft for peripheral by-pass grafting in pigs.