Heterotopic Heart Transplant Coronary Disease Basic Research

With the development of immunosuppressive drugs and technology, heart transplantation has achieved a great success in the treatment of patients with end-stage heart failure or very complicated congenital heart disease. Early results of heart transplantation are satisfacfactory, but the long-term results are not so optimistic. Because all coronary blood vessels will develop myointimal hyperplagia progressively, causing varies degree of luminal stenosis or even complete obstruction, called cardiac allograft vasculopathy (CAV). Although numerous experiments have been made to reveal the mechanism of CAV. The pathogenesis of CAV still remains obscure. So futher investigations are needed for prevention of CAV and improvement of long-term result after heart tranplantation.Methods: Forty heterotopic heart transplantation models were made. The first ten heart transplantations were completed with standard Ono and Lindsey's original procedure, and the other thirty with our modified technique, in which the donors' right pulmonary arteries were anastomosed to the recipients' inferior vena cava. The recipient surviving more than 72 hours deemed as successful. 11 weeks later, all rats were sacrificed. All grafts were collected and examined historically. The intimal lesions of...