Propagation of sepsis in vascular grafts
I. L. Kron, J. W. Georgitis, P. Holmes and R. C. Britton
Clinical studies have stated that sepsis tends to remain localized at the
point of origin in a patent arterial synthetic graft. We have demonstrated
in the pig model that in the acute phase, infection will propagate distally
in both thrombotic and patent grafts. The propagation of infection is
probably intraluminal. The implication is that total graft excision is
necessary for proximal suture-line sepsis in the patent synthetic graft.
