I have tried this digestion method a few times, but a mass amount...

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The separation of the adventitia, when done properly, does not generate too much damage. You have to consider that the media is a very elastic tissue that absorbs most of the screeching. How do you detect dead cells? How do you know that the dead cells that you observe in the incubation are VSMCs? Do you perform any kind of staining to determine the nature of these fragments? This digestion step is mainly going to dissolve the collagen fibers within the media so that VSMCs can migrate out of the aorta ring. Therefore, a lot of debris is observed but this is mainly collagen fibers.