Equine Arterial Heterografts Altered by Controlled Enzymatic Digestion

The inability to acquire satisfactory numbers of arterial homografts continues to spur the search for an adequate substitute. Such a substitute should possess the qualities of homografts which make them suitable for the correction of arterial aneurysms and occlusions. The ease of procuring animal arteries having a structure and distensibility similar to those of human arteries naturally has led to their consideration as vascular grafts. Carrel1first demonstrated the feasibility of using heterografts to bridge arterial defects in animals. However, in general, arterial heterotransplantation has been less successful than homotransplantation. This difference may be related, at least in part, to an immune response by the host. This investigation is an attempt to discover a method of altering animal arteries which will reduce the severity of the host's immune response to them without significant alteration of their structural integrity. This is a preliminary report concerning the effect of controlled enzymatic