Postsurgical changes in arterial compliance.

Mismatch in elasticity between artery and graft, a possible contributing factor to graft failure, has traditionally been believed to be caused by the graft. Compliance of the artery and/or graft may change after surgery, resulting in a different compliance mismatch. To study the arterial contribution to compliance mismatch, we measured compliance-pressure (CP) curves noninvasively in the femoral arteries of five dogs. One femoral artery was then simply exposed, and the incision was closed. Repeated CP curves were obtained after 24 hours, and after 1, 2, 3, and 4 weeks. Compliance remained normal after 24 hours, but by one week compliance of the dissected arteries had dropped significantly at all pressures between 70 and 120 mm Hg. Compliance reached a minimum after two weeks and remained low until after four weeks. Postsurgical arterial stiffening causes a significant decrease of arterial-graft compliance mismatch and may suggest an upper limit for synthetic graft compliance.