Vascular histopathologic reaction to pulmonary artery banding in an in vivo growing porcine model.

Pulmonary artery banding (PAB) is used as a surgical palliation to reduce excessive pulmonary blood flow caused by congenital heart defects. Due to the lack of microscopic studies dealing with the tissue remodeling caused by contemporary PAB materials, this study aimed to assess histologic changes associated with PAB surgery by analyzing local tissue reaction to the presence of Gore-Tex strips fixed around the pulmonary artery. Gore-Tex strips were used for PAB in a growing porcine model. After 5 weeks, histologic samples with PAB (n = 5) were compared with healthy pulmonary arterial segments distal to the PAB or from a sham-treated animal (n = 1). Stereology was used to quantify the density of the vasa vasorum and the area fraction of elastin, smooth muscle actin, macrophages, and nervi vasorum within the pulmonary arterial wall. The null hypothesis stated that samples did not differ histopathologically from adjacent vascular segments or sham-treated samples. The PAB samples had a greater area fraction of macrophages, a lower amount of nervi vasorum, and a tendency toward decreased smooth muscle content compared with samples that had no PAB strips. There was no destruction of elastic membranes, no medionecrosis, no pronounced inflammatory infiltration or foreign body reaction, and no vasa vasorum deficiency after the PAB. All the histopathologic changes were limited to the banded vascular segment and did not affect distal parts of the pulmonary artery. The study results show the tissue reaction of palliative PAB and suggest that Gore-Tex strips used contemporarily for PAB do not cause severe local histologic damage to the banded segment of the pulmonary arterial wall after 5 weeks in a porcine PAB model.