[Peculiarities of the parietal organisation of the superficial temporal artery].
BACKGROUND
The study of the structure in the arterial wall has been essential to use vessels in the coronary and cerebral bypass. The superficial temporal artery, owing to its high elastic content and its topography, close to the middle cerebral artery, has made possible the revascularization surgery in cerebral areas with ischemia. AIM. The purpose of this study is define the structure of the superficial temporal artery.


METHODS
The material of the present study are 60 arteries from medico legal necropsies without apparent vascular pathology. Pieces were fixed in 10% formol, embedded in Paraplast, sectioned in sequence of 7 mm and were stained to detect elastic, collagen and reticulin fibers. Histochemical techniques have been done too.


RESULTS
The superficial temporal artery shows a high elastic content, above all in the middle outer of the tunica media. The negative aspect is the great quantity of collagen in this tunica, that produces the progressive hardness of this vessel with the increase of the age. Histochemistry shows how the accumulation of acid mucosubstances interferes in the correct nourishing of the internal elastic membrane, that is disorganized in the cushions.


CONCLUSIONS
The superficial temporal artery is an appropriate vessel to the coronary and cerebral bypass, due to its high elastic content in this tunica and the limitants. It have not been observed in our material zones without internal elastic membrane. Histochemistry shows abundant acid mucosubstances that difficult the nourishing in the arterial wall.
Sarrat-Torres
R
R
Universidad de Zaragoza. Facultad de Medicina, Zaragoza, España. rsarrat@posta.unizar.es
Cisneros-Gimeno
A I
AI
Torres-del Puerto
A M
AM
Whyte-Orozco
J
J
Sarrat-Torreguitart
R
R
D002548:Cerebral Revascularization; D002560:Cerebrovascular Circulation; D003094:Collagen / Q000737:chemistry; D001026:Coronary Artery Bypass; D006651:Histocytochemistry; D006801:Humans; D013699:Temporal Arteries / Q000033:anatomy & histology* / Q000473:pathology
D003094:Collagen