Observations of Elastic Synthetic Fabric Sleeves as Vascular Prostheses

There is a best way to do everything—Emerson Review of the many published reports * dealing with the investigation of plastic fabrics as vascular prostheses has led to a reappraisal of the problem in this laboratory. In those reports, although much importance has been attached to the facility with which various synthetic tubes maintain blood flow, little attention has been given to several very important aspects of the basic problem of converting commercially prepared cloth fabrics into physiologically sound and surgically acceptable substitutes for vascular segments. Great interest has been evident in comparative rates of "endothelial" regrowth, for instance, but only one observer is on record as having attached any significance to the need for some degree of elasticity in the prosthetic grafts.19Problems of wrinkling and thrombosis have been discussed, but several investigators seem prepared to accept and have, in fact, already put to clinical use, fabrics having