Surgical heart reconstructions using graft materials can do amazing things for patients, but in young children they have a serious limitation. The grafts don’t grow along with a growing heart, and so for procedures such as right ventricular outflow tract reconstructions repeat surgeries are required. Now researchers at University of Minnesota are reporting in journal Nature Communications on newly developed “off-the-shelf” vascular grafts that can grow as the tissue they’re connecting develops and matures.
