Juvenile Swine Surgical Alveolar Cleft Model to Test Novel Autologous Stem Cell Therapies.

Reconstruction of craniofacial congenital bone defects has historically relied on autologous bone grafts. Engineered bone using mesenchymal stem cells from the umbilical cord on electrospun nanomicrofiber scaffolds offers an alternative to current treatments. This preclinical study presents the development of a juvenile swine model with a surgically created maxillary cleft defect for future testing of tissue-engineered implants for bone generation. Five-week-old pigs (n=6) underwent surgically created maxillary (alveolar) defects to determine critical-sized defect and the quality of treatment outcomes with rib, iliac crest cancellous bone, and tissue-engineered scaffolds. Pigs were sacrificed at 1 month. Computed tomography scans were obtained at days 0 and 30, at the time of euthanasia. Histological evaluation was performed on newly formed bone within the surgical defect. A 1 cm surgically created defect healed with no treatment, the 2 cm defect did not heal. A subsequently created 1.7 cm defect, physiologically similar to a congenitally occurring alveolar cleft in humans, from the central incisor to the canine, similarly did not heal. Rib graft treatment did not incorporate into adjacent normal bone; cancellous bone and the tissue-engineered graft healed the critical-sized defect. This work establishes a juvenile swine alveolar cleft model with critical-sized defect approaching 1.7 cm. Both cancellous bone and tissue engineered graft generated bridging bone formation in the surgically created alveolar cleft defect.

Early detection of complete vascular occlusion in a pedicle flap model using quantitative [corrected] spectral imaging.

BACKGROUND: Vascular occlusion after tissue transfer is a devastating complication that can lead to complete flap loss. Spatial frequency domain imaging is a new, noncontact, noninvasive, wide-field imaging technology capable of quantifying oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin levels, total hemoglobin, and tissue saturation. METHODS: Pedicled fasciocutaneous flaps on Wistar rats (400 to 500 g) were created and underwent continuous imaging using spatial frequency domain imaging before and after selective vascular occlusion. Three flap groups (control, selective arterial occlusion, and selective venous occlusion) and a fourth group composed of native skin between the flaps were measured. RESULTS: There were no statistically significant differences between the control flap group and the experimental flap groups before selective vascular occlusion: oxyhemoglobin (p=0.2017), deoxyhemoglobin (p=0.3145), total hemoglobin (p=0.2718), and tissue saturation, (p=0.0777). In the selective arterial occlusion flap group, percentage change in total hemoglobin was statistically different from that of the control flap group (p=0.0218). The remaining parameters were not statistically different from those of the control flap: percentage change in oxyhemoglobin (p=0.0888), percentage change in deoxyhemoglobin (p=0.5198), and percentage change in tissue saturation (p=0.4220). The selective venous occlusion flap group demonstrated changes statistically different compared with the control flap group: percentage change in oxyhemoglobin (p=0.0029) and deoxyhemoglobin, total hemoglobin, and tissue saturation (p<0.0001). CONCLUSIONS: Spatial frequency domain imaging provides two-dimensional, spatially resolved maps of tissue oxyhemoglobin, deoxyhemoglobin, total hemoglobin, and tissue saturation. Results presented here indicate that this can be used to quantify and detect physiologic changes that occur after arterial and venous occlusion in a rodent tissue transfer flap model. This portable, noncontact, noninvasive device may have a high clinical applicability in monitoring postoperative patients.