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AAA EVAR techniques

A Matter of Degrees: The Terrible Aortic Neck Solved With Geometry

CTA AAA with pancreatitis_1

The patient, a younger middle aged woman, was referred for treatment of a large, growing infrarenal AAA over 8cm in size complicating a severe pancreatitis. The pancreatitis occurred about a month prior to presentation and resulted in a substantial pancreatic leak. At the time of that presentation, her AAA was found incidentally and was about 7cm. In the interval, her pain resolved and she was asymptomatic. On examination, her abdomen was soft, and a large aortic aneurysm was easily palpable.

Pancreatitis with surrounding retroperitoneal fluid leak
Pancreatitis with surrounding retroperitoneal fluid leak
CT scan was performed showing an enlarging AAA over 8am and abundant retroperitoneal pancreatic fluid without abscess or infection. The AAA was infrarenal but complicated by a severely tortuous, short infrarenal neck with 90 degrees of angulation and about 8mm in length. As the pancreatic leak was yet early in the process, no pseudo aneurysms had formed. MRCP showed no active leak.

Short neck
Short neck

Greater than 90 degree neck angulation
Greater than 90 degree neck angulation
Other than the pancreatitis, the patient, who was in her 50’s, was an otherwise good risk patient.

The treatment options were:
1. Wait until pancreatic fluid resolution or pseudo aneurysm formation, then standard open repair of the large aortoiliac arterial aneurysm. Not desirable because of the relatively rapid aneurysm growth and current size.
2. EVAR -This is outside the IFU for any of the available devices because of the highly tortuous neck anatomy. While note shown, the external iliac arteries were 5mm in diameter, but in the absence of plaque, was possibly due to spasm. The Nellix device is yet on trial, but there are limits on how much you can straighten this neck. The devices with suprarenal stents end up straightening out the graft with deployment of the graft in an ellipse. This also means loss of seal zone length which decreases with oblique deployment. FEVAR is not possible because of this neck tortuosity as well but was considered briefly.
3. Homograft repair or Rifampin soaked graft repair -The former is costly and still susceptible to infection from a virulent organism as is the latter, but both are likely safe with likely foregut flora.
4. Neo-Aorta reconstruction (NAS) with deep femoral vein. This could work, but is time consuming and relatively morbid. The tactic of mobilizing the vein and then repairing the aneurysm in a separate, staged fashion the following day or two is reported to shorten the overall operative time. This patient would require both femoral veins to be harvested.
5. Aneurysm exclusion and extra-anatomic bypass with axillofemoral bypass. Offered to complete this list, this is the least desirable option given the poor long term behavior of axillofemoral bypasses in younger patients.

When faced with this kind of challenge, it makes sense and should be standard practice to get the opinion of the group. I happen to have excellent partners to run this kind of cases. The consensus was this: EVAR with accepting a short term result to temporize until definitive repair could be done. I found this acceptable. I chose to use the Excluder device because it allows for redos of the proximal deployment (C3 Delivery system) and the 23mm and 26mm devices used 16F access. A detailed discussion with the patient and the intention to eventually definitively repair open was discussed and patient was agreeable to proceeding. Plan B’s of Rifampin soaked graft replacement and NAS was also discussed.

I tried two things that was different. I felt that a stiff wire would result in horizontal orientation of the top of the graft, and so I placed a bend in the wire. Prior experience with unintended bends in wires have taught me that passing these wires is largely tolerated as long as it is done through catheters and sheaths. The other thing I did was bend the top of the delivery system -this was done with some care as I did not want to detach the contraining mechanism.

IMG_6493

IMG_6496

neck

The wire and delivery system modification did tilt the top of the graft away from the left side of the aorta. It had the unintended effect of keeping the wall grabbing anchors away from the near wall while constrained.

Sketch270558

It didn’t tilt the graft as much as I would have liked, but the graft deployed in a left to right fashion that allowed for controlled delivery across all of the available neck. Gratifyingly there was seal (below). I flared the right, while excluding the left iliac bifurcation because of the larger iliac aneurysm.

implant angio -46

As this was done percutaneously, the patient recovered rapidly and was discharged a day later. The question philosophically for me is if the seal remains intact, would there ever be a need for explantation? The patient only received perioperative antibiotics, and I felt long term antibiotics was not indicated. Standard followup was arranged.

There is no question there is a need for devices designed for this kind of neck anatomy. These devices need to bend over to angles at least 90 degrees and unbend based on delivery system design. They need to be low profile as this facilitated repair in this patient with small access vessels.

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TEVAR

Aortic Zones

TEVAR zones

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AAA EVAR techniques TEVAR

Percutaneous EVAR and TEVAR -how to get there if you aren’t doing it right now.

24F Access pEVAR
22 French Percutaneous Access circa 2008

Percutaneous access for EVAR and TEVAR does several things. First, the procedure becomes shorter by an hour or two, and (don’t discount not having nursing count instruments because the case was percutaneous). Second, the patients experience far less discomfort and it is easier to discharge them the next day when they have a bandaid versus an incision. And this leads to the third thing: not having an incision means it is far less likely that a groin infection will occur, especially in the obese.

There are three things which you must do before undertaking pEVAR. First, you have to become comfortable with using the Perclose S device in 6F-8F access -about 5 to 10 successful closures will do. You should become facile with the deployment of the sutures and closure of the access point. Avoid small arteries or heavily calcified arteries. This leads to the second point -all of your groin access should be ultrasound guided -this has been shown to improve results in pEVAR (Ref 1). I am a firm believer that the source of groin access complications starts with the initial needle stick. The 18g needle is basically a short 11 blade rolled up into a cylinder, and during groin access without ultrasound imaging, one can shear branch arteries, skewer arteries, dissect plaque, and access too proximally or distally, or into the profunda femoris.

needle is scalpel

The third need is access to 3D reconstruction software and multislice CTA. This gives you powerful ability to predict which patients are more suitable for a percutaneous approach, and which should have a cut down, and with 3D virtual reality reconstructions, you can plan where the incisions will be. In the skinny patient, this is not a pressing issue, but in the merely obese and the frankly obese, and the super obese, choosing to go percutaneous and avoiding a groin complication, which may be the one thing that debilitates the patient far more than a stent graft deployment, becomes an easy decision with experience.

As you build your 6-8F Perclose experience, you may notice that having too tight and subcutaneous tract can result in the suture catching on SQ fat, and not closing, or that bleeding won’t surface properly and create a hematoma under Scarpa’s fascia, often after the patient gets to the recovery room. Expanding on this principle, as you leap to 12F access and preclosure, I recommend you try this -make a 10mm incision, and using a tonsil clamp, pop through Scarpa’s fascia and seat the tips of the clamp under ultrasound on top of the soft part of the CFA that you intend to access. Gently spreading creates the space that you need to deploy the sutures and ensure that any bleeding will exit the skin and not dive under the fascia. It amounts to an ultrasound guided dissection of the common femoral artery. Before you remove the tonsil, you gently maneuver a micropuncture (always) access needle between the tines of the tonsil clamp until it gets to the artery -this keeps the eventual wire going through the tunnel you just made.

12F can usually close with a single Perclose, but start practicing by placing two Perclose sutures in a 10 oclock and 2 oclock orientation. Once the sutures are in, I make sure the  two ends of the suture are pulled out and the end loop of the suture is on the artery and I clamp these sutures to the drapes medially and laterally depending on how I deploy the two sutures. This also helps avoid catching the suture and driving it into the aorta.

After performing EVAR or TEVAR, I remove the sheath, leaving a wire -typically the stiff wire originally supporting the sheath and deploy one of the sutures. This first suture should cinch down onto the artery and substantially decrease the bleeding coming from the access site. I then deploy the second suture, and if the bleeding has stopped or is a steady dribble, I remove the wire. If pulsatile bleeding persists, I recinch the sutures using the knot pushers. If this decreases flow, I remove the wire, otherwise, I place a dilator, stop the bleeding and cut down. Cutting down after SQ dissection means merely dividing skin and tissues over the dilator, and the artery is easily visible for suture placement. If I remove the wire and there is still some bleeding, and usually there is, I place Gel-Foam soaked in diluted thrombin into the tract, reverse heparin, and hold pressure for 10-20minutes. It is very rare to have to convert after this is done.

thrombin gelfoam
thrombin-gelfoam into tract

The skin is closed with an absorbable 4-0 monofilament suture, and skin glue. I usually use the micropuncture needle to give an ilioinguinal field block with Marcaine. This gives 24hrs of pain relief.

bandaids

A note about incisions. Usually, with 3D VR imaging of CTA, the CFA and its quality (size and absence of plaque), and location relative to the inguinal crease can be ascertained. I try to make the access point at the inguinal crease or distally, as this goes under the subpannus of groin fat rather than through it.

groinaccess
3D-VR imaging can pinpoint optimal access

I sincerely believe sheath size is not the limiting factor to percutaneous access. Rather, it is the common femoral and iliac artery. Zakko et al at the University of Florida just published their experience on the obese with percutaneous TEVAR (ref 2), and found that while the arteries were deeper, the technical success rate of staying percutaneous (over 90%) was no different between their obese patients non-obese patients. The predictors of failure were poor access artery quality and size. I believe that you can select for patients most likely to succeed and greatly reduce failure. In this population, groin complications are potentially life threatening, and avoiding an open groin exposure is valuable.

 

References

1. J Vasc Surg 2012;55:1554-61 (ultrasound guided access)

2. J Vasc Surg 2014;60:921-928 (p-TEVAR and obesity)