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FEMORAL ARTERY ENDARTERITIS-AN UNKNOWN ENTITY
FEMORAL ARTERY ENDARTERITIS IS STILL A RELATIVELY UNKNOWN ENTITY ESPECIALLY AMONG VASCULAR SURGEONS AND CARDIOLOGISTS.NO DOUBT ITS REPORTED INCIDENCE IN LITERATURE IS LESS THAN 1%.


WHAT EXACTLY IS FEMORAL ENDARTERITIS?BASICALLY ITS THE INFECTION OF THE FEMORAL ARTERY AND ITS SURROUNDING TISSUE POST CONVENTIONAL ANGIOGRAM.PATIENT PRESENTS TO YOU WITH PAIN IN THE GROIN GENERALLY WITHIN A WEEK AFTER ANGIO ALONG WITH SYMPTOMS OF SEPSIS AND LOCALISED INFECTION /CELLULITIS IN THE GROIN EXTENDING INVARIABLY OVER THE ABDOMINAL WALL WITH PUS DISCHARGE AT THE PUNCTURE SITE.


WE REPORT A CASE OF FEMORAL ARTERY ENDARTERITIS IN A 73 YEARS OLD MAN WHO REPORTED TO OUR CENTRE IN MOHALI WITH SYMPTOMS OF SEPSIS(HIGH GRADE FEVER,LOW HEAMOGLOBIN,LEUKOCYTOSIS,DERANGED RENAL FUNTION TESTS AND REACTIVE THROMBOCYTOSIS)ALONG WITH SEVERE GROIN PAIN AND SWELLING EXTENDING OVER THE ABDOMINAL WALL.THIS PATIENT UNDERWENT ANGIOGRAM THROUGH THE FEMORAL ROUTE SOME TEN DAYS BACK.HE WAS PUT ON STRONG ANTIBIOTICS BUT TO NO AVAIL.A DOPPLER SCAN AND A CT ANGIO RULED OUT MYCOTIC PSEUDOANEURYSM OF THE FEMORAL VESSELS.


WE TOOK HIM UP FOR IMMEDIATE SURGERY AND FOUND FLORID INFECTION AND CREAMISH YELLOW COLORED PUS EXTENDING FROM THE PUNTURE SITE TO THE GROIN THE ABDOMINAL WALL (SUGGESTIVE OF STAPYLOCOCCUS INFECTION).WE DID A WIDE DEBRIDEMENT OF THE GROIN AND THE FEMORAL ARTERIAL WALL AND REPLACED IT WITH VENOUS PATCH.THE FEMORAL ARTERY WAS COVERED WITH THE TISSUE AROUND TO PREVENT A BLOWOUT.THE GROIN IS LEFT OPEN TILL THE LOCAL INFECTION SUBSIDES AND THE PATIENT IS READY FOR SECONDARY SUTURING.


I FEEL THOUGH UNCOMMON BUT STILL THIS ENTITY LARGELY GOES UNREPORTED /UNDERREPORTED.I HAPPENED TO TALK ABOUT THIS WITH MY COLLEAGUES IN CARDIOLOGY AND VASCULAR FRATERNITY BUT ALL I GET TO KNOW IS THAT THEY HAVE READ ABOUT IT BUT NEVER SEEN IT.ANYWAYS IN A SITUATION LIKE THIS TREATMENT OPTIONS ARE LIMITED AND THE OPERATING SURGEON HAS TO BE VERY AGGRESSIVE IN HIS LINE OF ACTION FOR THESE PATIENTS MAY NEED REPEATED DEBRIDEMENTS AND A POSSIBLE OBTURATOR FORAMEN BYPASS TO SAVE THE LIMB FROM AMPUTATION.
THE ABOVE PICTURE PUBLISHED SHOWS YOU THE SITE OF PUNCTURE WITH PUS DISCHARE ALONG WITH CELLULITIS OF THE NEIGHBOURING TISSUE

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VASCULAR SURGERY - TIME FOR RECOGNITION
Vascular Surgery: Time For Recognition
DR GAURAV SINGAL M.S,DNB (VASCULAR SURGERY), FIVS(DUSSELDORF, GERMANY)
SENIOR VASCULAR SURGEON AND CHIEF
INSTITUTE OF VASCULAR SCIENCES,IVY HOSPITAL, MOHALI, INDIA
Answers to problems in vascular surgery, like the refinement of diagnostic techniques and the development of biologically better small arterial substitutes, are slowly emerging. But what has so far eluded is independent recognition of vascular surgery as a separate specialty.
In a historical perspective, these problems are not unexpected. For centuries, even millennia, medicine was an undivided unitary segment of human interaction with the hostility of nature. There was no conceivable reason to parcel out the meager factual cargo that encompassed the knowledge of diseases and the (usually fruitless) attempts to deal with them.
A physician was a person whose identity was sharply defined within an unchanging circle of activity. It was only in relatively recent times (some 300 years ago), that the first dichotomy appeared in this image: the recognition of a new type of physician who used his or her hands in treating disease, that is, the surgeon. A veritable deluge of change came as medicine assumed the aspects of science no more than 100 years ago. Internal medicine and surgery assumed sharply distinguished silhouettes during the last 50 years; their further fragmentation has resembled a chain reaction.
This process has forced each subdivision of the large entity of medicine to face the same problem of defining its identity, as we now see in vascular surgery. Elemental and vitally important questions arose: Is the existence of the new subdivision justified by the goal it seeks to achieve? What exactly is the scope of its legitimate interest? Who is entitled to enter it? How does one acquire this entitlement?
The difficulties do not lie only at clinical level; a mundane concern also enters the picture. The practitioners of the parent discipline instinctively resent the contraction of their territory. The interests of the new specialty often conflict with the aspirations of other fields that have been newly created.
The need for the very existence of new branches is often questioned. All these historical conflicts have afflicted the birth and growth of vascular surgery.
Everyone knows about heart diseases, but very few know about vascular diseases. In fact, vascular disease kills and cripples almost as many Indians as does a heart disease or cancer. The sheer magnitude of the problem of vascular disease in India is staggering.
Although there is no accurate vascular registry, the fact that there are over 25 million diabetics in the country is just a small pointer to the vast numbers of the undiagnosed vascular cases. Patients having severe vascular diseases have been treated for low backache and arthritis for years.
It is only the onset of peripheral gangrene which brings to light the fact that arterial pulsations have been absent for long periods of time hitherto unnoticed. Even after diagnosis, the only treatment for these unfortunate cases has been amputations, which leaves the primary vascular problem unsolved. The lack of awareness of the disease is so acute, that even some cardio-vascular surgeons have never heard of a separate, independent vascular surgery department or a vascular surgeon leave aside general practitioners. A truly tragic situation indeed!
From the beginning, the existence of independent vascular surgery as a specialty was challenged by the Medical Council of India (MCI), as in India it is still considered to be a part of the broad speciality of cardio-thoracic-vascular surgery (CTVS). To the exception MCI has granted Madras Medical College, Chennai to start the MCh training programme in vascular surgery, but unfortunately the facility can only be availed by the surgeons of the state, thereby denying valuable training opportunity to the surgeons from rest of the country.
However, all the hope is not lost for vascular patients in India. Thanks to the effort of National Board of Examination (NBE), New Delhi, which understood and realised the magnitude of the problem. With a vision and mission in 2001, the NBE started a two-year fellowship programme in peripheral vascular surgery and hence giving a separate independent recognition to this subject. Presently, this course is available in only three major cities and because of its popularity has been converted into a full fledged 3 years program from 2008 onwards. Not only this Sri chitra institute Trivandrum has also started the Mch program in vascular surgery from 2008 onwards.This suffices to say the growing popularity of this speciality in medical fraternity.
Inspite this, the picture is not clear. Cardiac surgeons in India still claim themselves to be the best vascular surgeons also. No matter, as in reality there operative vascular work is less than two per cent and their CTVS training is focussed only towards cardiac surgery. Infact the approach, diagnosis and therapy of vascular diseases is very much different from the approach to a patient with heart disease.
No reason to blame them .Infact what is required is a separate recognised, independent vascular surgery department, which can take care of peripheral vascular system.
Not only that, to confuse and complicate the issue further we now have general surgeons, thoracic surgeons and general surgeons with some experience in vascular surgery, all claiming to do vascular operations. Now even cardiologists and radiologists are claiming themselves in the race of treating and eliminating vascular diseases.
This conceptual puzzle kept many hundreds of surgeons in resentful confusion for years. Time, however, slowly but surely has begin to sort out this confusion. Hospitals concerned with their professional standing are increasingly inclined to grant vascular privileges to new staff members, only if they are certified by the MCI or NBE as having special or added qualifications in vascular surgery.
The image of the vascular surgery is gradually acquiring formal recognition .Time is not far away when this speciality will get its due and will go on to serve the ailing community.

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The Role of Carotid Endarterectomy in Preventing a Recurrent Episode of paralysis
Carotid reconstruction was first performed by Eastcott et al. at St. Mary's Hospital, London, in 1954. However, it took nearly four decades until trial evidence became available to show that carotid endarterectomy was better than best medical treatment in patients with amaurosis fugax or hemispheric symptoms, transient ischaemic attacks, or stroke who had made a good recovery and whose symptoms were caused by severe carotid bifurcation stenosis (>70% with the North American Symptomatic Carotid Endarterectomy Trial [NASCET] method or >80% with the European Carotid Surgery Trial [ECST] method). The two-year risk of stroke in the medical arm of NASCET was 26% compared with 9% in those who underwent endarterectomy. Subsequently, the NASCET trialists reported that endarterectomy reduces the five-year risk of stroke in moderate stenosis (50%–69%) from 22.2% to 15.7%. A recent meta-analysis of the NASCET and ECST trials showed that benefit from surgery was greatest in men, patients aged 75 years or older, and those randomised within two weeks after their last ischaemic event, and fell rapidly with increasing delay.
Surgery is usually performed at six weeks if there is good recovery, but there is a tendency to perform it earlier in patients with transient ischaemic attacks or strokes with good recovery when CT brain scan shows no infarct. Surgery reduces the risk of stroke by 50% even if the event occurred more than six months previously, as shown by the Medical Research Council Asymptomatic Carotid Surgery Trial .
While recovering from stroke and awaiting carotid endarterectomy, aspirin even at a low dose of 75 mg daily reduces the risk of recurrence. .

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Basic things a general practitioner should know when examining a patient of vascular surgery
Well we have been taught rigorously in our medical schools but still we tend to forget the so called ABC of how to examine a patient when he/she turns to our clinic with a concerned disease.First and foremost is to check and feel for the peripheral pulses.Most of us only feel for the radial artery pulse and just forget to feel for the lower limb pulses which can yield an important clue into diagnosing a vascular disorder.I have come across patients with paraplegia wherein they were admitted under the supervision of a neurologist thinking it to be a neurological disorder.By the time a diagnosis is made either by a clinical examination of the peripheral pulses or a CT angio,patient gets into a state of irreversible ischemia wherein saving the legs become next to impossible .I feel if all of us can add this simple step of feeling for the peripheral pulses in our daily practise many limbs can be prevented from being amputated by referring the patients with absent pulses to qualified vascular surgeon.I end this article with a famous saying by Leonardo Da Vinci Knowing is not enough; we must apply.
Being willing is not enough; we must do.

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