  The significant rates of post-operative arterial thrombus formation following
the sutured anastomosis (surgical connection) of vessels in microvascular
reconstruction has kindled the development of engineered solutions such as the
UNILINK coupler. These devices reduce thrombosis rates, which recent numerical
studies suggest to be due to decreases in shear strain rate across the
anastomosis site when compared to sutured vessels. In this work we develop and
analytically solve the first mathematical model for the problem of
microvascular anastomosis, leading to the discovery that the rates of
thrombosis using these surgical coupling devices could be further reduced by
decreasing the gradient of the wall deformation at the join.
