Improving small-diameter vascular grafts: from the application of an endothelial cell lining to the construction of a tissue-engineered blood vessel.

One of the main reasons why vascular reconstruction with synthetic small-diameter grafts has limited success is the absence of endothelial cells. To improve the outcome of nonvenous vascular bypass surgery, cell seeding of vascular grafts and other tissue-engineering techniques were developed. In this article, an overview is given of the artificial blood vessel as an alternative for venous vascular bypass surgery.