Current status of developing tissue engineering vascular technologies

Introduction Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death in western countries. Although surgical outcomes for CVD are dramatically improving with the development of surgical techniques, medications, and perioperative management strategies, adverse postoperative events related to the use of artificial prosthetic materials are still problematic. Moreover, in pediatric patients, using these artificial materials make future re-intervention inevitable due to their lack of growth potential. Areas Covered This review focuses on the most current tissue-engineering (TE) technologies to treat cardiovascular diseases and discusses their limitations through reports ranging from animal studies to clinical trials. Expert Opinion Tissue-engineered structures, derived from a patient's own autologous cells/tissues and biodegradable polymer scaffolds, can provide mechanical function similar to non-diseased tissue. However, unlike prosthetic materials, tissue-engineered structures are hypothetically more biocompatible and provide growth potential, saving patients from additional or repetitive interventions. While there are many methods being investigated to develop TE technologies in the hopes of finding better options to tackle CVD, most of these approaches are not ready for clinical use or trials. However, tissue engineering has great promise to potentially provide better treatment options to vastly improve cardiovascular surgical outcomes.