how can they remove veins/blood vessels and graft them elsewhere in the body during surgery? Where does all the blood those veins were carrying go?weren’t they necessary if we have them?
In: Biology
We have arteries and veins. Arteries carry oxygenated blood to our tissues, veins take it away.
Using an artery for a graft; there are areas of the body that are supplied by blood from more than one artery. Examples at our hands get a blood supply coming from both the radial and ulnar arteries. If one becomes damaged/blocked, there is still enough of a blood supply for the hand to survive. Like wise the front of the chest wall and breast gets a lot of its blood supply from the intermammary arteries, but there is still enough supply coming off the axillary artery and subclavian to compensate for loss of the intermammary arteries.
There are obviously vessels that are essential as they go on to supply large areas (eg the right subclavian artery supplies blood to the axillary, radial and ulnar artery, so if it were to be removed or blocked, your right arm is screwed, and it’s gone. You can’t take big arteries as too many areas rely on its supply
Using veins: similar to arteries but taking blood away, many areas are drained by multiple veins, until you get to the big ones which get blood from multiple sources.
An example is the saphenous vein in the leg. It is often used in heart bypass surgery. There are still other veins in the leg to drain blood (the femoral vein in the leg)
There is enough stretch within blood vessels wall to accommodate the increase in flow
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