Construction of a canine model with acute type B aortic dissection using a self-made pressure-driven flow device.

Abstract

A reproducible canine aortic dissection (AD) model would be useful for evaluating the performance of novel endovascular treatment devices. Therefore, we attempted to create a reproducible canine model of Stanford type B AD (TBAB) by a surgical method. Computed tomography angiography was performed 2 h after the procedure to determine if a false lumen was present, and follow-up imaging was performed 10 d after the procedure using digital subtraction angiography, intravascular ultrasound (IVUS), and color Doppler flow imaging (CDFI) to confirm stable persistence of the false lumen. The success rate of model construction was 88.8% (16/18). All surviving dogs had distal re-entries (16/16). The number of re-entries in the dogs was 1.50 ± 0.52, and the mean length of the false lumen was 175.37 ± 16.98 mm. IVUS showed the area of the false lumen at the narrowest part of the arterial lumen was 84.88 ± 1.27%. The CDFI showed that the peak systolic velocity in the false lumen (10.89 ± 0.74 cm/s) was significantly slower than that in the true lumen (25.31 ± 1.72 cm/s; P<0.001). Moreover, the direction of blood flow in the true lumen was consistent, whereas that in the false lumen was disordered. We optimized the traditional surgical method to construct a canine model of TBAD to improve the success rate of model construction, and designed a novel device to lengthen the false lumen. The proposed model has wide implications in evaluating the performance of novel endovascular treatment devices and studying the AD-related hemodynamics.