DSC examination of the oesophagus after two different self-expandable stents implantation -: An experimental study

Massive bleeding from oesophagus varices presents a life threatening complication of liver cirrhosis. No effective method of treatment is available until now, that would guarantee high grade of patient wellness during the conditioning and investigation phase until the definitive treatment could be introduced. The fact that we have not found any report in the literature about self-expandable metal stents (SEMS) application in acute variceal bleeding had encouraged us to use stents usually used for oesophageal malignancy and furthermore develop a special stent for this individual indication. The aim of this study was to evaluate the tissue response to oesophagus stent designed for stop acute variceal bleeding in animal experiment in compare with another stent used for iatrogenic treatment of different strictures of the oesophagus. Tissue oxygen saturation (StO(2)) measurement was performed before and after the implantation of the stents. Macroscopic and histological investigations of the stented oesophagus segments were observed after 10 days. Differential scanning calorimeter (DSC) is a well-established method for the demonstration of thermal consequences of local and global conformational changes in biological systems, but it has never been used for the investigation of the oesophagus. According to our results the thermal denaturation of intact oesophagus, its mucosa and muscle fragments revealed significant differences compared to healthy sample in favour of the new stent.