Cardiologists Intend To Use A New Technique To Divert Blood Flow In A Man

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Cardiologists have pioneered the world's first non-surgical bypass operation to turn a vein into an artery using a new technique to divert blood flow in a man with severe heart disease. The keyhole procedure, which avoids the extensive invasive surgery of a conventional bypass, will offer hope to tens of thousands of people at risk from heart attacks.

Coronary heart disease, where the arteries are progressively silted up with fatty deposits, is responsible in a major industrial country Tag Heuer Replica Watches like Britain for more than 160,000 deaths each year. Although major heart surgery u) becoming commonplace, with more than 28,000 bypass operations in the UK annually, it is traumatic patients and involves a long recovery period.

The new technique was carried out by an international team of doctors who performed the non-invasive surgery on a 53-year-old German patient. According to a special report in Circulation, journal of the American Heart Association, cardiologists developed a special catheter which was inserted into one of his leg arteries, ...
... it threaded up through the aorta to the top of the diseased artery, which was the only part still open and receiving blood. Then, guided by ultrasound, a physician pushed a needle from inside the catheter through the wall and into the adjacent vein. A thin, flexible wire was threaded through the needle and the needle catheters were withdrawn, leaving the wire behind and a small angioplasty balloon, which was used to widen the channel. Finally, the vein was blocked off just above the new channel allowing blood from the artery to 1 re-routed down the vein.

After the procedure, the vein effectively became an artery, carrying blood in the reverse direction fix the previous way, and feeding the starved heart tissue with oxygen.

Dr. Stephen Oesterle, who led the team, said: "This milestone marks the first coronary artery by performed with a catheter. The technology offers a realistic hope for truly minimally invasive bypass procedures in the future. One of the most invasive things you can do in medicine is coronary artery bypass surgery. Ultimate goal is to replace traditional coronary artery bypass with a procedure that does not require surgery. Dr. Oesterle is director of cardiology at Massachusetts General Hospital and associate Replica Breitling Watches professor of medicine i Harvard Medical School in Boston. Melanie Raddon, cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation, said was likely to be many years before the procedure was routinely used in hospitals.