Abdominal Veins Used to Treat Brain's Blocked Artery

Surgeons have documented the first use of a blood vessel from the abdomen to treat a blocked artery in the brain. Their work was reported in the December 2002 issue of Surgical Laparoscopy, Endoscopy, and Percutaneous Techniques.

Usually, surgeons use a blood vessel from the leg to treat this kind of blockage and to restore blood flow. However, this procedure requires two invasive procedures, one to remove the blood vessel in the leg and another to graft it into the brain. The new technique requires only one procedure and is minimally invasive. The surgeons used laparoscopy to remove a blood vessel from the omentum. Next, they created portals that allowed them to create a tunnel for the omentum. Then they used the portals to pull the graft through the tunnel until it reached the brain.

"Because we had to stretch the omentum from the abdomen to the brain, we had to map the entire path so the main vessel could maintain its blood supply as it unfolded and reached the brain,” said Dr. Constantine T. Frantzides, professor of surgery at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center (Chicago, IL, USA), one of the participating surgeons. "The portals were placed along the path of the grafted blood vessel so the surgeon could access the vein and pull it along until it reached the brain.”

The patient, a man of 49 with a history of hypertension and heart disease, had suffered right-sided weakness, slurred speech, and loss of balance. He fully recovered and showed no signs of these symptoms postoperatively.




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Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center