Effects of microvascular clamp duration on the wall of rat femoral artery

This experimental study has the purpose of establishing if and to what extent increasing microvascular clamp duration affects the wall of small arteries, when we exceed the 10 minutes' time on average needed to make a microvascular anastomosis without complications. Observing the specimens after a week's time, we also wanted to study any possible impairment of the tissue regenerating capacity, in relation to different clamp duration. From the obtained data we wanted to establish if prolonged clamp duration possibly represents an impairment of free-flap clinical success