Doctors have found a new, minimally invasive surgical technique for treating a life-threatening burst abdominal blood vessel – known as an aneurysm – is safe and saves lives.
Research on the technique, presented at the Society of Interventional Radiology's 37th annual Scientific Meeting in San Francisco, found it can repair a ruptured or bulging aorta -- the largest blood vessel in the body – and stop deadly bleeding more safely and effectively than the standard option of major surgery.
Patients who undergo the procedure, called endovascular aneurysm repair (EVAR), also require less recovery time and in-patient care.
A burst aneurysm is usually deadly, killing 15,000 people a year. About half the time, victims die before they reach a hospital. Standard treatment involves surgery to repair the blood vessel to halt internal bleeding. But doctors at Saint Francis Hospital in Evanston, Ill., said their analysis of patients who underwent the EVAR technique were more likely to survive than those receiving surgery.
In EVAR, a radiologist makes a small incision in the groin and threads a thin wire catheter through the femoral artery to the point of the rupture. A stent is pushed through the catheter and is opened up against the blood vessel wall to stabilize it and allow blood to flow normally.
For the new study, researchers tracked nearly 39,000 patients who were treated with surgery or EVAR from 2001 to 2009. They found nearly 40 percent of patients who received surgery died in the hospital, compared to about 28 percent who received EVAR.
In addition EVAR patients had shorter hospital stays than those who had surgery (11 vs. 14 days). About 35 percent of EVAR patients were able to go home without requiring further in-patient rehabilitation, compared to only 22 percent of those who underwent surgery.
"We found that [EVAR] resulted in significantly fewer hospital deaths after treatment compared to open surgery, and the hospital stay associated with endovascular repair was less than that of open surgery," said Dr. Prasoon Mohan, co-author of the study.
"I believe [EVAR] will be the procedure of choice for emergency treatment of ruptured aneurysms in the future. It has proven valuable and it saves lives," he added.