A Surgeon's Notes
The deep femoral vein offers an important source of autologous conduit, particularly for aortic reconstruction or for limb salvage. It may be mobilized on one day and harvested another in a staged fashion to avoid a prolonged operation. While there is a period of leg edema postoperatively, most tolerate harvest of this vein which may be life saving.
The patient had an isolated 3.0cm common iliac artery aneurysm. Patient is in his fifties and wants to avoid the need for annual CT scans, buttock claudication. He had also read about neurological complications with open aortic surgery like retrograde ejaculation.
An older patient may be well served with hypogastric artery embolization and iliac stent grafting. In the absence of an aortic or contralateral common iliac artery aneurysm, it would be hard to justify placing a bifurcated aortic stent graft to then accessorize with snorkels. He was not a candidate for the branched iliac stent graft trial (disclosure: I am a site PI for the Gore iliac branched trial and the Cook iliac branched device is also available on trial) and he was not enthusiastic about the follow up -neither was I, when we discussed other endovascular options.
When I broached open surgery, there was a pause because he had read about all the endovascular procedures that were possible, but truthfully, he had never had an honest discussion about open repair.
In the current set up of care and training, there would be opinions favoring a purely endovascular approach. Ironically, in another time, the approach we chose would have been considered minimally invasive. The operation was planned with a left lower quadrant retroperitoneal pelvic exposure. The plan was to replace only the aneurysm and revascularize both the internal and external iliac arteries. The internal was revascularized with an end to side anastomosis to a 12mm graft and the common iliac to external iliac revascularization was end to end.
The patient recovered and was discharged in two days. The good thing is that he won’t face buttock claudication and has a low risk of neurologic complications (primarily retrograde ejaculation). Future endovascular options were maintained in the way the graft was tailored -particularly in the creation of a generous landing zone for any future aortic endograft. The patient won’t need to come back for surveillance on the same rigorous schedule as an endograft.
The patient is 70 year old woman with prior history of smoking who developed severe claudication and near rest pain. She was unable to walk more than 50 feet before having to stop due to severe leg pain. On exam, neither femoral artery pulses were palpable. PVR’s (pulse volume recordings) and ABI’s (ankle brachial index) are shown below.
PVR’s demonstrate the presence of severe inflow (aortoiliac occlusive disease or AIOD). CTA was acquired and the findings were consistent with the PVR’s.
There was diffuse bilateral iliac atherosclerotic plaque with occlusion of the right common femoral artery and left common and external iliac artery. The 3DVR (three dimensional virtual reality) reconstruction image below shows this as well as the abdominal and pelvic wall collaterals feeding the legs around the occluded iliofemoral system.
Plans were made to perform a hybrid common femoral and profunda femoral endarterectomy, remote external iliac artery endarterectomy (EndoRE), and common iliac artery stenting. The specific challenges to this case was getting into and staying in the true lumen. Typically, this is easiest to achieve from a left arm access with wires being pushed antegrade, but in a smaller person, particularly woman, this increases the chances for access site complications. My plan was to expose both common femoral arteries and get control of the external iliac arteries at the inguinal ligament and the profunda femoral arteries at the point the proximal plaque dissipated -typically at the second branch point, and then get micropuncture access of the right iliac system by accessing from the common femoral plaque. This would give me true lumen access, and with a sheath and curved catheter (VCF in this case, but a similarly shaped OMNI Flush catheter would do as well), wire access up and across the occluded left iliac system could be achieved and the wire retrieved from the left common femoral artery. This up and over access with the wire allows for control of the aortic bifurcation and both iliac systems.
I perform EndoRE over this wire -this allows for quick access if the artery is ruptured. To minimize blood loss, I gain control of the common femoral artery in the following fashion -a 4cm segment of common femoral artery is left intact and looped above the inferior epigastrics -this loop is brought out in the lateral lower quadrant of the abdomen so that the loop doesn’t travel distally over the arteriotomy. The second loop adjacent to the arteriotomy is sent through periadventitial tissues behind the artery to keep the loop migrating over the arteriotomy. The arteriotomy is created from the distal CFA (common femoral artery) onto the profunda femoral artery (PFA) where the endarterectomy is started. A separate arteriotomy on the superficial femoral artery (SFA) allows me to divide the plaque and mobilize the proximal segment up to the SFA origin, freeing the CFA plaque in this manner. It also gives me the option to perform EndoRE of the SFA if warranted. The dissected plaque and system of loops which I call the blood lock is shown below:
The yellow loops are major control points (the blood lock loop is drawn in the picture above) and the red loops are around smaller branch arteries. At this point, micropuncture access through the plaque core was achieved into the true lumen of the yet patent EIA (external iliac artery, picture below).
The right EIA plaque was mobilized with a Vollmer ring dissector, and cut with a Moll ring cutter (LeMaitre).
This allowed for cutting and removal of the plaque.
Up and over access and control of the wire from the contralateral (left) arteriotomy allowed for EndoRE on the other side. The occluded left common iliac plaque was ballooned and wire access into the aorta from the left was achieved.
Kissing balloon angioplasty was performed with revascularization of the aortoiliac bifurcation and common iliac arteries.
The stents were extended across the dissected end points of the external iliac artery origins. The arteriotomies were closed with bovine pericardial patches. Because the PFA were of small caliber, to avoid narrowing the distal end of the patch, the patches were sewn over Argyll shunts which also allowed perfusion of the legs during the suturing of the patches. The loops made this a straighforward maneuver.
The completed CFA to PFA patch on the left is shown below:
Closure involved reapproximating the Scarpa’s type investing fascia of the femoral triangle and a running dermal layer of absorbable monofilament, dressed with a surgical glue. No drains were used, but if needed, they would be exited through the counter incisions created for the EIA loops.
The patient recovered well. I always use cell salvage -sometimes, profundaplasties can be bloody, particularly if they are in reoperative fields. The ABI’s and PVR’s at the ankles improved significantly.
The postoperative CTA shows good results as well. Below is the composite right and left centerline from aorta to the PFA’s.
The 3DVR reconstruction images are shown below, with the comparison to preop shown in the first image of this blog entry:
The pre and postoperative images of the centerlines (composited) are shown below:
EndoABF is an established hybrid procedure involving an open endarterectomy of the common femoral and PFA/SFA with iliac balloon angioplasty and stenting, often taking the stents distally into the CFA and the patch to deal with complex distal EIA plaque. This procedure, which would be an EndoRE ABF, offers some advantages in eliminating the need for EIA stents which are often placed across the inguinal ligament and into the patch during EndoABF. In my experience, the EIA EndoRE performed as an extension of a CFA endarterectomy is safe, and made even safer by performing the EndoRE over a wire. Published results from Europe shows for TASC C and D disease, EIA EndoRE has excellent patency, and I would expect the same here. EndoRE and Endo ABF both offer advantages over traditional ABF, particularly in patients with medical comorbidities.
The patient severe claudication and nocturnal rest pain and had undergone an inflow procedure at another hospital consisting of a common femoral endarterectomy and a single stent to the external iliac artery near its origin from the iliac bifurcation. He also had undergone a concurrent SFA atherectomy which closed and was treated with SFA stents extending from the SFA origin to the above knee popliteal artery. Unfortunately, his rest pain worsened.
On exam, he had a femoral pulse only and no distal pulses, only monophonic and weak pedal signals. The right groin wound had been treated for postoperative wound infection and there was still some swelling and a stitch abscess, but no deep infection. CTA showed that his profunda femoral artery had a focal dissection or stenosis at the origin along with overhang of his SFA stents across the origin of the PFA. The SFA stents were occluded along their whole length. There was remnant disease of the external iliac artery as well.
There was reconstitution of a diseased but patent above knee popliteal artery with three vessel runoff. He had had harvest of his greater saphenous vein. Treatment options included multisegment arm vein with redo profundaplasty, but given the inflammation around his recently operated, recently infected groin, I was concerned for wound infection. He was also quite disabled by his worsened pain. The other option was to access the left common femoral artery and placed a sheath up and over and wire across the diseased profunda and intervene on it, but with the stent in place, I would have to place likely another stent across the origin. I could then attempt a bypass with arm vein or prosthetic graft using this compromised artery as inflow for a bypass to the below knee popliteal artery or a tibial vessel but I doubted this would be durable, nor resistant to infection if prosthetic was used.
Remote endarterectomy (EndoRE) gave me a third option. It is a hybrid technique, but based on an old and established technique of open remote endarterectomy dating from the 60’s. Rings (Vollmer Rings, LeMaitre Vascular) are used to dissect occlusive plaque under fluoroscopy, and a cutting ring (Moll Ring Cutter, LeMaitre Vascular) is used to cut the plaque at the chosen location. Because the distal end point of dissection is not surgically exposed, but rather fluoroscopically guided, it is termed Remote Endarterectomy. Wire skills are required to access and repair any dissections that may occur.
I have presented in the past a series of cases where I removed occluded stents. Because the dissection is carried out outside the plaque, it is also outside the stent. Retrograde EndoRE of SFA plaque can be carried out up to the SFA origin, and avoid a groin incision which in this case was important. Therefore, a proximal thigh exposure of the SFA and EndoRE was planned with endovascular access by left CFA as described.
The SFA was a hard, calcified pipe and control was achieved with vessel loops which allow passage of the ring and occlusion of the artery once the plaque and stents were removed. The artery was opened via longitudinal arrteriotomy and the plaque mobilized and divided. The proximal SFA plaque was then dissected (above and below).
There was immediate establishment of a robust pulse in the proximal SFA after removal of the plaque.
Distally, the plaque would not mobilize at a point in the artery where there was laxity in the artery and especially adherent plaque and therefore, the distal SFA was cut down on to reaccess the stent from below.
The arteriotomies were repaired with patch angioplasties using bovine pericardium. This allowed for completing the procedure with endovascular techniques which included the distal end point dissection, profunda stenosis, and external iliac stenosis.
At completion, there was a palpable dorsalis pedis artery pulse. The composite angio with preop CTA centerline reconstruction are shown below.
He had relief of his symptoms. Prior to discharge, ABI and PVR’s show normalization of flow to his foot.
Conclusion: In my experience, the longevity of these lesions is dependent on the same factors dictating other revascularizations -excellence of inflow, optimization of profunda outflow, and good tibial outflow. The conduit, being the recanalized original artery, is not as good as a single vein, but it remodels and becomes normal artery based on micro pathology. Failure occurs at the stent with the usual restenosis that can occur in some but not all people, and in isolated points in the artery where likely remnant tissues scar creating focal lesions. Frequent surveillance achieves acceptable primary and secondary patencies. Thromboses do occur. Unlike PTFE grafts, thromboses in EndoRE is usually limited to the recanalized artery without distal embolization. Stent removal is challenging but feasible. In this patient, a second cut down was required to achieve plaque and stent removal. The groin was not re-entered, avoiding dissection in a recently infected, surgical wound. If the popliteal was occluded, a popliteal endarterectomy via a below knee cutdown is possible achieving total femoropopliteal plaque clearance, and the below knee popliteal artery can then be used for a very short bypass to one of the tibial arteries if indicated and if autologous vein is limited in availability.
EndoRE offers a third option after bypass and intervention and should be in a vascular surgeon’s armamentarium.
The patient is an elderly man who had bilateral above knee amputations after failure of aortobifemoral bypass grafts at an outside institution. Unfortunately, he had no femoral pulses and his amputation on the right broke down (image above). His left stump had erosion of his femur to the skin with rest pain as well, but was at least covered by skin for now. He was declared too sick for hip disarticulations and was sent to a hospice where he failed to pass away. After a year there, he was sent to us for an evaluation.
He was suffering from rest pain and had complete breakdown of the skin over his amputation stump. More worrisome was the development of gangrenous scrotal and decubitus ulcers which were small but persistent and also foci of pain. CTA showed the following:
The aorta was occluded below his renal arteries. An AV fistula near his common femoral vein lit up his right iliac vein on the CT above. He had had a prior aortobifemoral bypass but this was occluded. Gratifyingly, it was anastomosed proximally end to side, giving us options. As with any revascularization, we had an inflow source -his aorta, and several potential outflow sources (CTA below, contrast filling iliac vein from AVF’s).
In particular, his distal profunda femoral artery showed promise. Vein mapping revealed a short segment of basilic vein in his arm to use as bypass, but we needed inflow from the aorta.
I have come to appreciate two things about aortoiliac recanalization. First is that passing the wire antegrade is far likelier to stay in the true lumen at least in the aortic inflow segment -retrograde wire passage inevitably dissects the occlusive aortic plaque and reentry into the true lumen of the diseased aorta is just as challenging as in the leg. The second is vein bypasses have excellent patency in challenging conditions -you just need excellent inflow and an arterial bed to perfuse.
My plan was to cross the aortoiliac occlusion with a wire from the left arm. Once the right iliac system was entered, it didn’t matter if I was in a subintimal plane. The wire could be seated in the common femoral artery to access with a surgical exposure. Once this was done, my intention was to perform remote endarterectomy of the external iliac artery and stent from the aorta to the common iliac artery. The endarterectomized external iliac artery would be the inflow source of a later staged ilio-cross femoral bypass to revascularize his left AKA stump. The common femoral artery at its origin would provide inflow to a short vein bypass to his profound femoral artery.
The wire passed readily into the right iliofemoral system and a groin exposure and common femoral arteriotomy allowed me to retrieve the wire which had been passed from the left arm. A remote endarterectomy was performed over the wire which I do to ensure access in case the artery ruptures (specimen below).
This allowed me to place a sheath into the right iliac system in the now reopened external iliac artery. Balloon angioplasty of the aortoiliac segment created working space for placement of balloon expandable stents from the infrarenal aorta to the common iliac artery, restoring an excellent pulse in the right groin.
The profunda femoral artery was encased in scar tissue, but following the occluded PFA from the CFA, I was able to expose an open segment and cut it open in the scar tissue. There was back bleeding, and I controlled the artery by placing a small Argyll shunt into the artery and reperfusing it from the recanalized right iliac system.
The Doppler flow in the shunt was excellent, suggesting great outflow potential. The bypass was performed over the shunt with reversed basilic vein. Completion arteriography showed excellent flow.
The amputation stump was debrided of dead bone and muscle and the graft was covered with a sartorius muscle flap.
Before and after images are shown. The remaining open wound granulated well, and ultimately accepted a split thickness skin graft. His scrotal and decubitus ulcers healed as well (below at 6 months post op).
His left AK stump subsequently degraded while he recovered so three months after this operation, he underwent a right external iliac to left profunda femoral artery bypass with cadaveric vein.
I don’t like using cadaveric vein, but we really had no options. The right external iliac artery was approached through a right lower quadrant (transplant) incision and a punch biopsy of the artery revealed only normal adventitia on pathology. The EIA was soft and sewed well -essentially a normal artery brought back from the dead. The left profunda femoral artery was large after endarterctomizing its origin and accepted the bypass flow well.
The mortality from hip disarticulation in the setting of gangrene and infection is very high, and I feel that standard approaches to this problem -prosthetic axillo femoral bypasses, thoracobi-femoral bypasses, in the setting of advanced infection and gangrene were unlikely to succeed. In over 1.5 years of followup, everything has remained patent, and the patient lives independently.
The patient is a 60 year old with severe peripheral vascular disease. Risk factors included smoking, hypertension, and type I diabetes. The patient had developed gangrenous eschar over toes 1, 2, and 3. He had had prior bilateral femoropopliteal bypasses with saphenous vein, which was occluded on his symptomatic side, and stent grafts had been placed on his distal femoral to popliteal artery, but these were occluded. He also had chronic edema with some early lipodermatosclerosis and pitting edema. He was emaciated and had a low prealbumin.
CTA showed diffuse aortoiliac atherosclerosis with a severe stenosis in the proximal common femoral artery.
The femoropopliteal stent grafts were occluded but the popliteal artery reconstituted into a diseased set of tibial vessels -only the posterior tibial artery remained patent into the foot and remained as a target.
Preoperative angiography corroborated the CT findings.
The preoperative vein mapping suggested there was an acceptable anterior thigh tributary vein and marginal segments of vein below the knee. Arm vein was available as well.
My plan was to explore the veins on his legs and expose his CFA and BKPOP along with the posterior tibial artery. If the veins were inadequate, I would proceed with open endarterectomy of the common femoral artery and remote endarterectomy of the external iliac artery and stenting of the diffusely diseased common iliac artery and remote endarterectomy of the femoropopliteal segment above the stent to use as inflow for a shorter bypass with the vein we had.
Exploration showed that the anterior thigh vein was thin walled and became diminutive in the mid thigh. The infrageniculate veins were numerous and too small. I thought I might have enough for a short bypass from a recanalized mid SFA.
The remote endarterectomy of the external iliac and stenting of the common iliac went without complications. I do this over a wire to ensure access in case of rupture. A postop CTA shows the results in the aortoiliac segment.
Remote endarterectomy of the SFA went smoothly but was held up by calcified plaque above the occluded stents.
I cut down on the SFA and found that the vein from the thigh would be short. I mobilized the plaque and re engaged the Vollmer ring and was able to dissect the stents. By starting another dissection from the below knee popliteal artery, the stent was mobilized and removed.
The figure below shows the procedure angiographically. I used a tonsil clamp to remove the mobilized stents.
The common femoral and mid SFA arteriotomies were repaired with patch angioplasties. The infrageniculate popliteal arteriotomy was used as inflow to a very short reversed vein bypass with the best segment of thigh vein to a soft posterior tibial artery.
The patient had a palpable posterior tibial artery pulse at the ankle. CTA predicted the plaque found in the tibioperoneal trunk which compelled me to do the short bypass. In my experience, remote endarterectomy, sometimes with short single segment bypass, successfully restores native vessel circulation without need for lengthy multisegment arm vein bypass. Remote endarterectomy of the external iliac artery avoids the difficult CFA plaque proximal end point that often requires stenting across the ligament down to the patch. Only a single common iliac stent is required. I generally anticoagulate these patients with warfarin, especially if they are likely to resume smoking or have poor runoff. I hope to show this is the equal of multisegment vein bypass, and superior to it by virtue of avoiding long harvest incisions which are the source of much morbidity and now readmissions which are penalized.
The patient is an 65 year old man with a growing right common iliac artery aneurysm of 3.7cm, a small AAA, and severe COPD (not oxygen dependent, FEV 1.5L) . He had a prior left nephrectomy for cancer as well as a bladder resection and prostatectomy with an ileal conduit (Indiana pouch or neobladder), with complex abdominal wall closure complicated by infection of Marlex in the past, and prior operations for small bowel obstruction. He is morbidly obese. His kidney function was stable with a Cr 1.5dL/mL, calculated GFR or 44mL/min. His nuclear cardiac stress test (pharmacologic) was normal.
A magnified view of the accessory renal artery is shows below with the arrow
He needed to have his right CIAA treated but the issues were what to do with his accessory renal artery. Vascular surgery is all about making the right decisions with fall back plans. As with most complicated patients, the options are numerous.
I informally polled my partners and found an absence of consensus except for rejecting #1, 2, and 7. The first two options were not optimal because of his prior operation and because of the location of his disease. The third option had its proponents, but I felt that the kidney and pouch were in jeopardy from dissection in that area. The open debranching had its appeal for others, but for the same reasons that I rejected #3, I rejected #4 –potential harm to the kidney. #5 may be an option, but in my experience, I have seen too many patients referred for failure of parallel grafts to feel secure about offering it. #6 would be reasonable if the patient could avoid dialysis. With a calculated CGF of 44ml/min, losing half the remaining kidney would barely leave him off dialysis. By appearances though, the smart money was on losing less than 50% but more than 20%. A 30% loss would result in a GFR of 30mL/min or a Cr of 2.1 which made dialysis not likely. In my experience, the kidney does have some collateralization as evidenced by backbleeding of accessory renals with an infrarenal clamp so it may be that he might lose only 10-15%. I discussed all of these options and medical management with the patient who agreed to proceed with option 5 under my recommendation. My plan was to assess the flow from the accessory renal and proceed if it was small, with plan B being a parallel graft, plan C debranching.
In the OR, the right accessory renal artery was selectively catheterized and a nephrogram revealed that it supplied less than 20% of the kidney. The above diagram shows the extent of the total kidney and the area perfused by the accessory renal artery. I proceeded with coil embolization of it and the right hypogastric artery and EVAR of the AAA/R.CIAA.
In followup, the patient had a Cr of 1.7mg/dL, representing about 15% loss of kidney function. As the case was done percutaneously, he only had 1cm incision in both groins, and was pleased with his result. No endoleak was seen (CT above).
The telling lesson about this case is that at the time of initial consultation, my first instinct was to prepare the patient for open repair via a right retroperitoneal approach with debranching of the right accessory renal artery as a fallback position. Open surgery is my fallback as it was the foundation of my training. But experience has also taught me that patients with multiple comorbidities often struggle to recover from big operations even if one particular problem is not prohibitively severe. Finally, having smart partners to bounce ideas off of is a not only a luxury but a critical asset.
The patient had diffuse atherosclerosis with small luminal area even in areas without calcified plaque. It predicted inaccessibility for the 22 French sheath required to deliver the 32mm C-TAG device to be placed for a symptomatic type B thoracic aortic dissection associated with a small but expanding proximal aneurysm.
My options included direct aortic puncture, an aortofemoral conduit, or an endoconduit. The aorta was heavily calcified and the bifurcation was narrowed by circumferential plaque down to 6-7mm at its narrowest and the left iliac had a severe narrowing due to this plaque. The common femoral artery was severely diseased with a lumen diameter of 4mm due to heavily calcified plaque.
I have come to favor direct aortic puncture over conduits, but the heavily calcified aorta and the absence of safe areas to clamp made me think about other options. My experience with endoconduits has been limited to revising problems of endoconduits from elsewhere, but others report it as a feasible option.
The problem with a long artery narrowed with irregular plaque and even intimal thickening is that it will readily expand to accommodate a large sheath but removing it involves the frictional resistance of the whole artery and typically the “iliac on a stick” avulsion involves the whole length of external iliac artery, likely because the common iliac is anchored by the aortoiliac plaque, the smaller diameter of the EIA, and the longer more tortuous path offering greater resistance in the EIA compared to the aorto-common iliac segment.
Remote endarterectomy, a technique involving endarterectomizing an artery through a single arteriotomy, offers the possibility of increasing the lumen of even a mildly diseased artery and reducing the frictional coefficient, assuming the remnant smooth adventitia is less resistant than rough irregular intimal plaque.
The plan was to expose the right common femoral artery and endarterectomize it and gain wire access from the R. CFA. A wire would be placed on the left iliofemoral system to protect it for later kissing iliac stents. A right EIA remote endarterectomy would be performed, and then the right aorto-common iliac segment would be balloon dilated to 8mm.
The operation went as planned. The external iliac plaque was removed in a single piece from the EIA origin.
Arteriography showed the right EIA to be free of intimal disease, and dilators and ultimately the 22F sheath went in easily.
The TEVAR also went uneventully -the left subclavian which had a prior common carotid to subclavian bypass, was covered and the aneurysm and flap were excluded from the left CCA to the celiac axis.
The most difficult part of the operation was removing the sheath, as is usually the case with a tight iliac, but the friction point was largely at the common iliac and not the external iliac. No artery could be seen extruding with the sheath at the groin while steady tension was applied to the sheath under fluoro. The aortic bifurcation was repaired with kissing iliac stent. The patient recovered well and her chest pain resolved.
I have done this for EVAR, including reopening occluded external iliac arteries, and even for a 26F access for TAVR, avoiding the need for placement of a conduit in selected patients.
Addendum: in followup, I had the chance to check up on the repair -the EIA remained large and patent.
Before manufactured thoracic stent grafts were approved for use, you had to make your own. I think that even in theory you should have this in your mental locker, because it is pretty straight forward to accomplish. The patient was a homeless man who got struck by an SUV while crossing Broadway merely blocks from Columbia Presbyterian. The specifics are lost to time, but he was found to have among his multiple injuries a tear in his thoracic aorta at the ligamentum arteriosum. Cardiothoracic surgery felt that he was far too high a risk to undergo open repair. I was on call, and when I looked at this patient’s scans, I realized that he might survive with a stent graft across the tear, but the only suitable grafts were short aortic cuffs intended for infrarenal repair with short delivery systems. Being young staff, I called our site chief at that time, a grizzled veteran, for some advice about making stent grafts.
The process is simple enough, and discovering it is like finding out that a seemingly complicated dish has an exceedingly simple recipe. The process starts with an iron and an ironing board, with which you press flat a Cooley graft of 32 or larger diameter. The Cooley graft is a fine weave graft that has pressed cylindrical folds that allow you to collapse it like a Slinky toy. Ironing between two sheets of paper allows you to avoid overheating the fabric.
Once flattened and stretched, it is now ready for placement of stents. The stents shown here are Gianturco stents which typically are constrained with a monofilament and has barbs. The barbs are removed with needle nose pliers. 5-0 monofilament suture is used to secure the stents in the graft. More spacing allows for the graft to accommodate tortuosity, but the graft may bunch up in the sheath. The top and bottom stents should be within 5mm of the graft edge –this way you will remember that at deployment.
For this case which required only one stent, three were made and they were autoclaved. Loading into a large sheath of 24F is done over a catheter to preserve a wire channel. The graft is pushed in using the umbilical tape or silk suture technique referenced in Oderich’s paper about reloading modified stent grafts.
Because of the large deliver system, a conduit was required and sutured end to end into the common iliac artery –I no longer do this unless there is a problem with severe plaque requiring endarterectomy. The graft was deployed by push-pull technique with the heart rate slowed pharmacologically. The patient stabilized from this, took several months to recover from his other injuries but was discharged and lost to followup.
Is this knowledge helpful? In 2015, debatable, but in 2003, it saved a life.
This patient had had an endoscopic saphenectomy for coronary bypass at another institution and had developed a wound infection that eventually healed, but developed a pore at the scope site that continued to drain clear fluid soaking an ABD pad hourly. This had been cauterized and sutured without improvement.
The patient was taken to the operating room for dye lymphangiography and resection of the leak. The dye used was isosulfan blue which is lipophilic and is taken up by the lymphatics from the extra cellular space and pumped centrally within minutes of injection. The lymphatics are easily visible and the leak can be resected and the source vessels can be oversewn.
The suction cannula is on top of a lymphatic that was feeding the pore and was oversewn. I have had this occur in the forearm as well after a braciocephalic fistula creation.
The would was closed primarily. The lymphatics are evolutionarily the most primitive of our vasculature. They are gossamer threads often of single cell layer that have openings into the extracellular space and draw in fluid past bicuspid valves that bracket smooth muscle cells that periodically contract -a very primitive heart. The heart evolved from this mechanism.
It’s believed that multicellular organisms gained an advantage by maintaining an inner sea that was more organized and concentrated with nutrients than the surrounding sea, and to benefit all of the cells, it was necessary to circulate this inner ocean. The extracellular space is as porous as a sponge because that is what the ECM evolved from. Holding a wet sponge up in the air and watching the water go down with gravity is what happens when you stand up -edema. It is also why you can patiently and gently massage the extravasated saline from a displaced IV out of a hand and forearm. When the lymphatics stop pumping, the protein in the fluid eventually comes out of solution forming an insoluble solid -same thing that happens in cheese making when you add acid to milk -the hardened tissues of chronic lymphedema.
The pumping action is so efficient that injecting an amp of isosulfan blue into the web space between the toes subcutaneously will travel up the leg in about 5-10 minutes. There is a list of contraindications and precautions for its use, and hypersensitivity and anaphylaxis is reported to occur in up to 2 percent of patients.
This patient had primary closure and stopped leaking, after suffering from nearly a year of leakage.
A Surgeon's Notes 