Vascular clips for vascular anastomosis in renal transplantation

During the period from January 1996 to June 1998, we performed cadaveric renal transplantations in 9 patients. The successful use of vascular clips (Vascular Clip System, Auto-Suture Japan) for A-V fistula creation in 15 patients with chronic renal failure prompted us to use vascular clips in renal transplantation. Four stay sutures were placed and several clips were applied between the sutures to anastomose the donor renal artery to the external iliac artery in an end-to-side manner. Similarly the renal vein was anastomosed to the external iliac vein. using vascular clips. We compared the results of 3 unselected patients employing vascular clip anastomosis with those of 6 done employing conventional anastomosis. As a result, the mean time for vascular anastomosis and hemostasis was significantly shorter in vascular clip anastomosis than in conventional surgery method. However, the total surgery time was not different between the two groups. All patients tolerated the procedure well and there were no post-surgical complications. In conclusion, the vascular clip anastomosis is simple, quick, and easy. This procedure also has the advantage of exerting minimal vascular intimal injury because there is no penetration into the vascular wall. so intimal hyperplasia seems unlikely to occur. Therefore, vascular clip anastomosis appears promising in terms of proximal results.