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High porosity electrospun scaffolds for small diameter vascular graft applications

Porosity, pore size and pore interconnectivity have been shown to be critical factors for cellular infiltration into vascular grafts. While electrospinning has been shown to produce many promising characteristics for the fabrication of vascular graft scaffolds, it has yet to create sufficient porosi...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Voorneveld, Jason Dirk
Other Authors: Bezuidenhout, Deon
Format: Thesis
Language:English
Published: Division of Biomedical Engineering 2015
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Summary:Porosity, pore size and pore interconnectivity have been shown to be critical factors for cellular infiltration into vascular grafts. While electrospinning has been shown to produce many promising characteristics for the fabrication of vascular graft scaffolds, it has yet to create sufficient porosity for transmural endothelial in-growth. This study was aimed at using dual electrospinning with sacrificial fibre extraction to produce scaffolds with controllable porosity characteristics while maintaining sufficient structural strength to resist deformation during implantation. Scaffolds were subsequently covalently grafted with heparin, a known anti-coagulant with growth-factor binding properties.