Cardiology in the young
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Cardiology in the young · Dec 2020
Staphylococcus aureus adheres avidly to decellularised cardiac homograft tissue in vitro in the fibrinogen-dependent manner.
Infective endocarditis remains a severe complication associated with a high morbidity and mortality in patients after heart valve replacement. Exploration of the pathogenesis is of high demand and we, therefore, present a competent model that allows studying bacterial adherence and the role of plasma fibrinogen in this process using a new in-house designed low-volume flow chamber. Three cardiac graft tissues used for pulmonary valve replacement have been tested under shear conditions to investigate the impact of surface composition on the adhesion events. ⋯ The two studied homograft tissues showed different levels of bacterial attachment, which might be postulated by the involvement of fibrinogen in the adhesion mechanism(s) shown previously for bovine tissues.