Design of in situ porcine closed-circuit system for assessing blood-contacting biomaterials.

The overall pre-clinical process of determining the blood compatibility of any medical device involves several stages. Although the primary purpose is to protect the patients, laboratory testing has been over-utilized for many years with a huge number of unnecessary animal tests being done routinely. Recently, the elimination of needless testing has become important in controlling the cost of healthcare and in addressing many issues related to the ethics of animal research. With this in mind, we designed a new in situ porcine closed-circuit system to study the complex interplay between platelets, coagulation proteins, and other cellular elements in pigs. We proved that this system can be implemented in blood compatibility testing and minimize the number of animals used in the experiments.