Parkridge Cardiothoracic Surgery offers minimally invasive surgical approaches to treat a wide variety of heart conditions. Endovascular surgery is a technique for treating conditions affecting the blood vessels without making large incisions. Aneurysms, for example, may be treated with an endovascular procedure.
How It Works
Instead of general anesthesia, which is used for open procedures, endovascular surgery only requires local or regional anesthesia. This will make you more comfortable, and the area around the small incision will be numb.
Cardiothoracic surgeons begin by making a small incision in a blood vessel near your hip and insert a tiny catheter with a specially designed stent graft at the tip. They guide the catheter through the blood vessels to the area targeted for treatment. If treating an aneurysm, surgeons direct the catheter to the aorta and deploy the stent graft to seal off the area around the aneurysm so blood does not flow around it. The stent graft remains in place permanently.
Compared with open surgery, endovascular surgery offers many benefits, including reduced recovery time, postoperative pain and scar size.
Recovery
Patients typically stay in the hospital for two to three days. Immediately after surgery, you will be in the Cardiac Recovery Unit, where our highly trained nurses specialize in caring for postoperative heart patients. They will help you recover after surgery.
You will then be transferred to the floor, where our nurses will care for you until you are discharged.
You will be encouraged to walk and eat the day after surgery, but you may not feel fully energetic for about two weeks after the procedure.
When you return home, you may take sponge baths but do not soak the area of the incision until it is completely healed.
You will likely be able to return to normal activities within six weeks after surgery, and you will follow up with your cardiothoracic surgeon during this time.
For more information about Parkridge Cardiothoracic Surgery or to schedule an appointment, call (423) 698-2435.