Quantitative angiographic anatomy of the renal arteries and adjacent aorta in the swine for preclinical studies of intravascular catheterization devices

Swine are the most common animal model in preclinical studies of cardiovascular devices. Because of the recent trend for development of new devices for percutaneous catheterization, especially for the renal arteries (RAs), we examined the quantitative anatomical dimensions of the RAs and adjacent aorta in swine. Angiographic images were analyzed in 66 female Yorkshire/Landrace crossbred swine. The diameter of both the right and left main RA was 5.4 ± 0.6 mm. The length of the right main RA was significantly longer than that of the left (29.8 ± 7.5 mm vs. 20.6 ± 5.4 mm, respectively; P<0.001). The diameter of both the right and left branch RA with diameters ≥3 mm (the target vessel diameter of recently developed devices) was 3.8 ± 0.5 mm. The right branch RA was significantly longer than that of the left (18.9 ± 7.8 mm vs. 16.4 ± 7.4 mm, respectively; P<0.05). The branching angle of the right RA from the aorta was significantly smaller than that of the left (91 ± 12° vs. 103 ± 15°, respectively; P<0.001). The diameters of the suprarenal and infrarenal aorta were 10.6 ± 1.1 mm and 9.7 ± 0.9 mm, respectively. In conclusion, because of their similar dimensions to human, swine are an appropriate animal model for assessing the safety of, and determining optimal design of, catheter devices for RAs in simulated clinical use. However, there were species differences in the branching angle and adjacent aorta diameter, suggesting that swine models alone are inadequate to assess the delivery performance of catheter devices for RAs.