MICROCIRCULATION RESEARCH, ANGIOGENESIS, AND MICROSURGERY

Angiogenesis, the formation of new blood vessels, is essential to a va riety of normal and pathologic processes such as wound healing and tum or growth. In microsurgery the development of new vessels between the transferred tissue and the recipient bed is critical to the final outc ome of the reconstruction. Several experimental models have been previ ously developed to study angiogenesis and the effect that new substanc es have on regulating this process, but they lack the ability to make quantitative measurements. Therefore, we have developed an animal mode l using the homozygous (hr/hr) hairless mouse ear; by using intravital microscopy and computer-assisted analysis, angiogenesis can be quanti tatively measured. Using this model we showed that basic fibroblast gr owth factor and transforming growth factor beta significantly increase d total vessel length by 32% and 63%, respectively, during 20 days fol lowing subcutaneous injection. In this paper the importance of angioge nesis research to reconstructive microsurgery is presented and discuss ed.