Comparative Study of Tracheal Anastomotic Techniques

Song, Won Young; Lee, Yuen Je; Hwang, Sang Won; Kim, Han Yong; Yoo, Byung Ha; Kwon, O Jun

Abstract

Although several reports were presented recently about bronchial arterial revascularization in clinical lung transplantation, one factor peculiar to the lung transplantation is the ischemia of the donor bronchus. Poor bronchial healing occurs frequently following clinical lung transplantation and this has been major cause of mortality and morbidity. There have been many attempts to solve bronchial anastomotic complications. Telescoping technique, one of those attempts, was advocated by San Antonio Group recently. This experiment was performed to evaluate the effect of telescoping anastomotic technique upon the healing of the tracheo-bronchial anastomosis. We used rabbits(weighing about 800 g) as experimental animal. METHOD: Resection of middle one third of cervical trachea and reanastomosis was performed by simple interrupted anastomotic technique in Group 1(n=15) and by telescoping anastomotic technique in Group 2(n=15). RESULT: Anastomotic sites in the telescoping technique group showed significant increase of fibrosis in the early postoperative days(< 5days) and remarkable band-like fibrous union compared to the simple interrupted group.