The American Hospital Dubai said a new life-saving pinhole surgery to repair the body’s largest artery using stenting techniques was performed at the hospital.

A team led by Dr Omar Kamel Hallak, consultant interventional cardiologist, used an interventional cardiology procedure known as endovascular repair or ‘stenting’ (the insertion of tubes known as ‘stents’ into arteries to support them) to repair the abdominal aorta, which is the body’s largest artery about the size of a garden hosepipe, said the hospital in a statement.

“Endovascular repair or stenting is a common procedure in interventional cardiology where we use it to repair coronary arteries and we are applying our expertise in this procedure across new surgical areas through our multidisciplinary team,” said Dr Hallak.

Dr Hallak stated that the minimally invasive surgical procedure lasting around two hours, lowers the risk to the patient and leaves little or no scarring, while speeding up the recovery process.

“Candidates for this procedure are selected carefully as not every patient will be suitable, depending on the position and size of the aneurysm. However, the results for patients we have treated using this procedure have been very good, often with just an overnight stay in hospital and then discharge the day after surgery,” he said.  

These patients are at risk of aortic artery rupture due to an aneurysm (ballooning), which is often fatal. The condition is known as Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm (AAA), he added.

Aneurysms can occur in any artery but they most commonly occur in the aorta. The normal diameter of the aorta in the abdomen is about 20 mm but with an aneurysm a section of the aorta within the abdomen is 30 mm or more in diameter, he noted.

AAAs vary in size and generally, once they develop, it gets larger (about 10 per cent per year) and risk of rupture increases with the size. The repair is usually done when the size of the AAA is larger than 55 mm. - TradeArabia News Service