An Apparatus and Technique for Freeze-Drying Arterial Homotransplants

The concept of arterial storage and substitution, as developed experimentally by Carrel * and Guthrie¹²at the turn of the century and later successfully applied clinically by Blakemore,³Hufnagle,¹³and Gross,¹¹is now established as a practical and dependable procedure. A growing clinical experience with arterial substitution, as reported by Dubost,⁹Swan,²⁵Julian,¹⁷and De Bakey and Cooley,⁸has further emphasized the usefulness of arterial homotransplantation in the surgical management of obstructive and aneurysmal diseases of the major vessels. Until such time as the synthetic fiber fabric substitutes demonstrate an equally satisfactory solution to both large- and small-vessel substitution problems, it would appear worth while for the surgeon treating these conditions to have access to stored arterial homotransplants. Among the several methods of arterial transplant storage currently in use, the freeze-drying technique has been found most desirable by many investigators.† The most conspicuous