kidney transplant – A Surgeon's Notes

AAA with iliac arterial occlusion -arrows point to right external iliac and left common iliac arterial occlusions

The patient is an 70 year old man referred for evaluation of claudication that occurred at under a block of walking. He reported no rest pain or tissue loss. He smoked heavily up to a pack a day, with congestive heart failure with an ejection fraction of 40%, prior history of myocardial infarction treated with PTCA, and pacemaker, and moderate dyspnea on exertion.

On examination, patient had a flaccid abdomen through which the AAA could be palpated, and he had no palpable femoral artery pulse bilaterally, nor anything below. He had a cardiac murmur and moderate bilateral edema. Preoperative risk evaluation placed him in the high risk category because of his heart failure, coronary artery disease, and his mild to moderate pulmonary disease.
CTA (pictured above and below) showed a 5.1cm infrarenal AAA with an hourglass shaped neck with moderate atherosclerosis in the neck, an occluded left common iliac artery with external iliac artery reconstitution via internal iliac artery collaterals, and a right external iliac artery occlusion with common femoral artery reconstitution. There was calcified right common femoral artery plaque.

Preop left and right centerlines EVAR-ENDORE.jpg

Treatment options included open surgical aortobifemoral bypass with exclusion of the AAA, total endovascular repair with some form of endo-conduit revascularization of the occluded segments of iliac artery, or a hybrid repair.

Open aortic repair in patients with heart failure and moderate COPD can be performed safely (ref 1). Dr. Hollier et al, in the golden age of open repair, reported a 5.7% mortality rate operating on 106 patients with severe category of heart, lung, kidney, or liver disease.

Typically, the hybrid repair involves sewing in a conduit to deliver the main body of a bifurcated or unibody stent graft when endovascular access is not possible. Despite techniques to stay minimally invasive -largely by staying retroperitoneal, this is not a benign procedure (ref 2). Nzara et al reviewed 15,082 patients from the NSQIP database breaking out 1% of patients who had conduit or direct puncture access.

Matched analyses of comorbidities revealed that patients requiring [conduit or direct access] had higher perioperative mortality (6.8% vs. 2.3%, P = 0.008), cardiac (4.8% vs. 1%, P = 0.004), pulmonary (8.8% vs. 3.4%, P = 0.006), and bleeding complications (10.2% vs. 4.6%, P = 0.016).

Despite these risks, I have performed AUI-FEM-FEM with good results with the modification of deploying the terminus of the stent graft across an end to end anastomosis of the conduit graft to the iliac artery (below), resulting in seal and avoiding the problems of bleeding from the usually heavily diseased artery

Aorto-uni-iliac stent graft across end to end conduit anastomosis to fem-fem bypass

The iliac limbs of some stent graft systems will have proximal flares and can be used in a telescoping manner to create an aorto-uni-iliac (AUI) configuration in occlusive disease. The Cook RENU converter has a 22mm tall sealing zone designed for deployment inside another stent graft and would conform poorly to this kind of neck as a primary AUI endograft which this was not designed to act as. The Endurant II AUI converter has a suprarenal stent which I preferred to avoid in this patient as the juxtarenal neck likely was aneurysmal and might require future interventions

I chose to perform a right sided common femoral cutdown and from that exposure, perform an iliofemoral remote endarterectomy of the right external iliac to common femoral artery. This in my experience is a well tolerated and highly durable procedure (personal data). Kavanagh et al (ref 3) presented their experience with iliofemoral EndoRE and shared their techniques. This would create the lumenal diameter necessary to pass an 18F sheath to deliver an endograft. I chose the Gore Excluder which would achieve seal in the hourglass shaped neck and allow for future visceral segment intervention if necessary without having a suprarenal stent in the way. I planned on managing the left common iliac artery via a percutaneous recanalization.

The patient’s right common femoral artery was exposed in the usual manner. Wire access across the occluded external iliac artery was achieved from a puncture of the common femoral artery. Remote endarterectomy (EndoRE) was performed over a wire from the common femoral artery to the external iliac artery origin (pictures below).

External iliac to common femoral artery plaque removed with Moll ring cutter (LeMaitre Vascular) over a wire

The 18F sheath went up with minimal resistance, and the EVAR was performed in the usual manner. The left common iliac artery occlusion was managed percutaneously from a left brachial access. The stent graft on the left was terminated above the iliac bifurcation and a self expanding stent was used to extend across the iliac bifurcation which had a persistent stenosis after recanalization.

The patient recovered well and was sent home several days postprocedure. He returned a month later with healed wounds and palpable peripheral pulses. He no longer had claudication and CTA showed the aneurysm sac to have no endoleak (figures below).

post CTA EVAR-ENDORE

Composite imaging showing normal appearing right iliofemoral segment (EIA + CFA) and patent left common iliac artery.

Discussion
I have previously posted on using EndoRE (remote endarterectomy) for both occlusive disease and as an adjunct in EVAR. Iliofemoral EndoRE has excellent patency in the short and midterm, and in my experience has superior patency compared to the femoropopliteal segment where EndoRE is traditionally used. This case illustrates both scenarios. While the common iliac artery occlusions can be expected to have acceptable patencies with percutaneous interventions, the external iliac lesions typically fail when managed percutaneously especially when the stents are extended across the inguinal ligament. The external iliac artery is quite mobile and biologically, in my opinon, behaves much as the popliteal artery and not like the common iliac. Also, the common femoral arterial plaque is contiguous with the external iliac plaque, making in my mind, imperative to clear out all the plaque rather than what can just be seen through a groin exposure.

On microscopy, the external iliac artery is restored to a normal patent artery -I have sent arterial biopsies several months after endarterectomy and the artery felt and sewed like a normal artery and had normal structure on pathology. This implies that the external iliac can be restored to a near normal status and patients that are turned down for living related donor transplantation of kidneys can become excellent recipients. In this case, this hybrid approach effectively treated his claudication but also sealed off his moderate sized AAA while not precluding future visceral segment surgery or intervention with a large suprarenal stent.

Reference

Hollier LH et al. J Vasc Surg 1986; 3:712-7.
Nzara R et al. Ann Vasc Surg. 2015 Nov;29(8):1548-53
Kavanagh CM et al. J Vasc Surg 2016;64:1327-34

preop-cta

One of the nice things about practicing at the Clinic is being able to offer unique solutions. A severely diseased or occluded external iliac artery (EIA) can be a vexing problem, particularly if bilateral, in this endovascular era. Many cardiovascular devices require femoral access that has to traverse compromised iliac arteries -those with large (>16F) delivery systems require a sufficiently wide path to get the devices to the heart and aorta. Also, living related donor kidney transplantation is predicated on minimizing risk to maximize results and having significant iliac plaque negates one as a recipient for this high stakes elective procedure. In situations where the EIA is too small to accommodate devices because of atherosclerotic plaque, the typical solution is placement of a conduit to the common iliac artery or the aorta. The practice of “endopaving” with a covered stent graft and ballooning is also described, but its long term outcomes are not reported and the internal iliac artery is usually sacrificed in this maneuver.

This patient presents with lifestyle limiting claudication and an absent right femoral pulse. ABI is moderately reduced on the right to 0.57, and he had no rest pain. CTA at our clinic revealed an occluded EIA bracketed by severely calcified and nearly occlusive plaque of the common iliac artery (CIA) and common femoral artery (CFA).

Centerline Projection

The patient was amenable to operation. Traditionally, this would have been treated with some form of bypass -aortofemoral or femorofemoral with a common femoral endarterectomy. While endovascular therapy of the occluded segment is available, one should not expect the patencies to be any better than that of occlusive lesions (CTO’s) in other arteries. Hybrid open/endovascular therapy is an option as well with CFA endarterecotmy and crossing CIA to EIA stents, but I have a better solution.

The common femoral endarterectomy rarely ends at the inguinal ligament, and is uniquely suitable for remote endarterectomy, a procedure from the early to mid twentieth century.

Steps in Remote Endarterectomy

The addition of modern fluoroscopic imaging and combining with endovascular techniques makes this a safe and durable operation.

pre intervention.png

The patient was operated on in a hybrid endovascular OR suite. A right groin incision was made to expose the common femoral artery for endarterectomy and left common femoral access was achieved for angiographic access, but also to place a wire across the occlusion into the common femoral artery.

All actions on the external iliac artery plaque are done with an up-and-over wire, allowing for swift action in the instance that arterial perforation or rupture occur. This event is exceedingly rare when the operation is well planned. With this kind of access, an occlusive balloon or repairing stent graft can be rapidly delivered.

The common femoral endarterectomy is done from its distal most point and the Vollmer ring is used to mobilize the plaque. A Moll Ring Cutter (LeMaitre Vascular) is then used to cut the plaque.

Ring dissection.png

The plaque is extracted and re-establishes patency of the EIA.

Plaque Specimen

The plaque end point is typically treated with a stent -in this case, the common iliac plaque was also treated.

What is nice about this approach is that this artery has been restored to nearly its original condition. I have taken biopsies of the artery several months after the procedure in the process of using the artery as inflow for a cross femoral bypass, and the artery clamped and sewed like a normal artery and the pathology returned normal artery.

This has several advantages over conduit creation which can be a morbid and high risk procedure in patients who require minimally invasive approach. A graft is avoided. The artery is over 8mm in diameter where with stenting up to 8mm with an occlusive plaque, the danger of rupture is present, and often ballooning is restricted to 6mm-7mm. This is insufficient for many TEVAR grafts and TAVR valves.

For patients being worked up for living related donor transplants who are turned down because of the presence of aortoiliac plaque, those with the right anatomy can undergo this procedure and potentially become candidates after a period of healing.

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