Adherence of mucin and non-mucin-producing staphylococci to preclotted and albumin-coated velour knitted vascular grafts.

: The mechanisms involved in bacterial adherence to vascular grafts are important in understanding prosthetic infections. Albumin-coated Dacron (ACD) is a new development in vascular graft fabrication. However, albumin acts as a receptor for certain gram-positive bacterial adhesions. Five pathogenic, coagulase-negative Staphylococcus epidermidis strains were used to measure the differential microbial adherence to ACD versus untreated velour-knitted Dacron (VKD) vascular prostheses. Specimens of VKD, preclotted VKD, and ACD were inoculated with each of the five strains (10(7) colony-forming units/ml) for 2, 4, 8, 12, and 24 hours. After incubation, graft specimens were washed to remove nonadherent organisms and oscillated ultrasonically to remove adherent organisms. The sonication effluent was plated to trypticase soy agar to quantitate the adherent organisms. Adherence was significantly greater (p less than 0.01) to VKD compared with preclotted VKD and ACD at 2, 4, 8, and 24 hours. Four of the five study strains demonstrated significantly greater adherence to VKD than to either ACD or preclotted VKD. Adherence of S. epidermidis increased with exposure time. Albumin bonded to velour-knitted Dacron does not increase coagulase-negative staphylococcal adherence compared with the noncoated vascular prostheses. Binding albumin to vascular prostheses does not increase the risk of staphylococcal colonization.