Graft vascular disease in the great vessels and vasa vasorum.

To determine whether the great vessels were subject to transplantation-associated arteriosclerosis (graft vascular disease) we studied sections of aorta and pulmonary arteries from 19 cardiac explant cases. Sections of the same vessels from five autopsied hearts from patients who had received liver and/or kidney transplants with immunotherapy as well as from eight recipient hearts served as controls. In addition, eight donor hearts (three aortae and eight pulmonary arteries) that were not used for heart transplantation were examined. Intimal proliferation was noted in the aorta but affected the pulmonary arteries only slightly, whereas the vasa vasorum of both vessels were involved and were occluded or stenosed by thickened intima containing recanalized capillaries. On morphometric study the ratio of intima to media in the aorta was significantly higher in the heart transplant group than in the control group (0.14 +/- 0.14 [n = 19] v 0.02 +/- 0.02 [n = 16]; P < .01). This intimal thickening was not correlated with the use of cyclosporine or with other clinicopathologic factors. The cytomegalovirus infection rate was higher in the heart transplant group (85%) than in the control group (40%).