Arterial steal phenomenon in femoro-tibial bypass with arterio-venous shunt.

Arterio-venous shunts are sometimes constructed at the distal anastomosis of femoro-tibial bypass grafts in order to increase blood flow velocity within the graft. However, the use of such a shunt may "steal' blood from an already ischaemic distal arterial bed. The aim of this study was to determine the conditions under which this might happen. Experiments were carried out on an in vitro model of the femoro-tibial bypass under steady flow conditions. The simple resistance model of Hyman and Brewer (J. Biomechanics 13, 469-675, 1980), modified to take into account the nonlinear pressure flow relationship through a stenosis, was used to interpret experimental data. Good agreement was obtained between measured and calculated steal.