The Vascular Group of Naples Office Based Lab (OBL) launches state of the art Philips Veradius Unity mobile imaging and Excimer Laser for treatment of threatened limbs.
With over 17 years of vascular and endovascular surgery experience, we are extending complex therapies into the office outpatient setting to allow for increased safety, faster recovery, and higher satisfaction!
What is Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm?
“When we talk about Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm Treatment, try to picture the lower part of your aorta getting bigger and bigger. It if grows too much, then the risk of a rupture increases, and the level of danger is higher.
Your life could be in danger and measures need to be taken.
Professional measures in this case, as in any medical case.
An aneurysm takes place when plaques build up inside artery walls. With age these plaques appear more often, affecting the levels of oxygenated blood that are transported to every single part of your body.
Signs and Symptoms
An aneurysm can grow at a very slow rate, without showing any signs over time. Most are spotted on a checkout with your trusted health professional.
If there is a problem, then you will experience any or several these symptoms:
Diagnosis
As in everything related with health, the sooner a diagnosis is done, the better.
The Vascular Group of Naples is an institution that advocates for the use of the best technology available.
These are some of the terms you will find more often:
Causes
Most of the causes are related with one thing: your lifestyle.
To be more specific, you avoid it by having a healthy lifestyle.
Chances of suffering an Aneurysm are higher if you are overweight, if your diet includes foods with high presence of fat or if you smoke on a regular basis.
There are also other causes that are not under your control like infections on the aorta or high blood pressure.
Risk Factors
Other risk factors that are out of your control are:
Prevention
Even there are some factors that you cannot control directly, there are activities that can help you prevent an aneurysm, and most diseases, just by using a daily discipline:
Initial Management
Going into more detail, if you are diagnose, this is an overview of how the procedure will be:
– Prehospital care
As with any health procedure, paying attention to details is critical.
You can visualize prehospital care as follows:
– Emergency department care
When conditions mandate that the patient needs surgical intervention, all the equipment and procedures are set up to deal with things like: hemorrhagic shock, which are dealt with blood transfusions and surgery.
The clinicians must be aware of sudden changes in blood pressure.
Options for Surgical Intervention
Over the last 50 years there have been 2 established procedures:
– Open Repair
Open repair of AAA has a survival rate of 96%. Cardiac risk is reduced thanks to constant cardiac investigations and beta blockade.
Laboratory assessment is one of the first steps that need to be performed as well as a careful examination of the patient history and amplification on some details the clinician might consider of high importance.
Patient current lifestyle needs to be carefully examined to spot possible mental and physical deterioration.
All risk factors are listed and taken in consideration.
– Endovascular Repair
Also known as EVAR, has become, over the last 30 years, into a wide alternative to Open Repair.
Its minimal invasive techniques and lower preoperative risks made this one of the most used procedures. It has extended, even to elder population.
EVAR consist in accessing the abdominal aorta via small incisions over the femoral vessels.
An endograft is placed within the lumen of the AAA.
Think of these grafts as protection that decreases the pressure of the walls. This way, the risk of aortic rupture is lowered.
Consultations
The support of a radiologist is mandatory to determine if ultrasonography or Magnetic Resonance Imaging.
If the abdominal aorta exceeds a diameter of 3 cm there must be a follow-up with a vascular surgeon.
Over 4 cm a surgical repair is the best approach.
As in any surgery, anesthesia is required along with the necessary personnel to perform a successful surgery.
All professional health assessment needs to be done with precision and quality standards must be followed.
Complications
If it is too late and the AAA is not diagnosed, these problems may arise:
Aneurysm Terminology
Aneurysm Definition: for adult patients, a diameter bigger than 3 cm, is considered aneurysmal.
Less than 4.0 cm, we talk about small aneurysms.
Between 4.0 cm and 5.5 cm we talk about medium aneurysms.
Larger than 5.5 cm, are called larger aneurysms.
An expansion larger than 5.0 cm in a period of 6 months increases the risks.
Aneurysm Repair
Elective AAA repair is not recommended until the risk of rupture exceeds the risks associated with repair. This is a critical point where professional decisions are needed.
Other factors are very important to be considered: the presence of a coexistent peripheral artery disease. Diseases such as: iliac aneurysm and femoral aneurysm.
Observations are key when talking about conservative management. These procedures include clinical evaluation and AAA surveillance
Medical Risk Assessment
As physicians, we look for perioperative complications such as: coronary ischemia, arrhythmias or pneumonia.
Patients with smoking history need a closer observation, since the risk factors are more much higher and there are correlated with other diseases.
Conservative Management
As an accepted rule, AAA smaller than 5.5 cm need to be managed in a more conservative way.
Potentially Beneficial Therapies:
It is on the patient´s will and discipline to control this behavior. More than control it, it is best to eliminate it definitely.
Moderated physical activity is the first step. It is best if these activities are monitored by a health professional. Otherwise, the risks will be others. Moderation is best.
Professional recommendation also applies for a proper diet.
Statistics
In the paper “Epidemiology of Aortic Aneurysm Repair in the United States from 1993 to 2003”, it is stated that AAA has been described in the medical community over the last 50 years.
To spot trends in mortality, samples were taken between 1993 and 2003 in the United States.
These are their results:
“Overall rates of treated unruptured and ruptured AAAs remained stable (unruptured 12 to 15/100,000; ruptured 1 to 3/100,000). In 2003, 42.7% of unruptured and 8.8% of ruptured AAAs were repaired through an endovascular approach. Inhospital mortality following unruptured AAA repair continues to decline for open repair (5.3% to 4.7%, P = 0.007).
Mortality after elective endovascular AAA repair also has statistically decreased (2.1% to 1.0%, P =0.024) and remains lower than open repair.
Mortality rates for ruptured AAAs following repair remain high (open: 46.5% to 40.7%, P = 0.01; endovascular: 40.0% to 35.3%, P =0.823).”
This shows certain level of stability for patients treated with elective is Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm, although there is a change in the treatment paradigm where there is a preference for elective endovascular AAA repair.
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
You might be worry of having an aneurysms and that is why you reach my website. Maybe by searching for Peripheral Aneurysms Symptoms on Google.
Well, let me enlighten you as best as I can.
First, you need to know that there an aneurysms occur in the aorta. It can be the thoracic aorta or the abdominal aorta.
When we talk about a peripheral aneurysm, we are talking about affections in arteries other than the aorta.
The area with the higher chances of suffering this kind of aneurism is in the popliteal artery. This is located in the area in the back of the lower thigh and knee.
Also, it happens that if you are diagnosed with peripheral aneurysm in one leg, it is very likely that you also have the same condition in your other leg.
You need to know that 65% of patients might not notice any physical symptom.
If that is not your case or you are suspicious, and depending of their location, you might have experimented something similar to:
There is the risk of a stroke if the carotid artery is involve.
Now, hopefully, you are not suffering any of this symptoms. But you might be interested in know what causes a peripheral aneurism.
There isn´t certainty about a definitive cause.
Several researches link this condition to atherosclerosis. As our bodies age, your arteries narrow and get weaker. It is a natural process.
What you can do is to watch out not to speed up the process. How you might be wondering?
Just stay away from the following:
I hope you have now a clear picture of how to spot peripheral aneurysms symptoms.
If after reading this info you think you might be suffering peripheral aneurysm, don´t hesitate and go to visit your most trusted physician.
For deeper information, I recommend to visit VascularWeb.org
An angiogram is a test to take a look at the arteries in different parts of the body.
Think of an X-ray that makes use of a camera to take pictures of the blood flow thought the arteries.
Combining the X-ray with a special dye, the vessels are outlined and can be seen.
This test allow your doctor to check potential blockages in the coronary arteries or in other arteries or veins.
A coronary angiogram gives a better understanding of the actual state of your heart and how well is working or if something needs to be done. The same applies to other areas of the body.
This procedure is relatively safe and serious complications are a very rare thing.
For its complexity, it is better to take this procedure in a hospital with the proper equipment.
One the duties I am in charge of, is dealing with symptomatic chronic venous insufficiency. This is a condition that affects 5 in a 100 american citizens. I do it by performing an endovenous procedure.
As your high school teacher might have mentioned, arteries transport rich-oxygen blood from your heart to the other areas of your body and, then, veins return a less oxygen-rich blood to your heart. When the veins in your legs failed to perform this task, you will start suffering from chronic venous insufficiency.
What are the risk factors?
If not treated in time this can cause:
There are several approaches in dealing with this, such as:
In later posts I will explain each one these.
If you have need help, please, don`t hesitate and schedule an appointment to decide the best option for you.
PS: For more details about this condition, check this animated video
