An open aortic aneurysm repair is a very effective and long-lasting treatment option for aneurysms in your aorta. But it comes with higher risks than other types of procedures. This surgery opens your chest and allows us to repair your aneurysm using an artificial blood vessel. W. Darrin Clouse, MD, explains how UVA’s Aortic Center is best equipped for procedures like open aortic aneurysm repair.
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Transcript
An open operation for someone who has good cardiopulmonary heart and lung function is always an option. And that involves an incision in the chest, or the abdomen, or sometimes both. It requires an operative exposure of the aorta. It requires clamps to stop the blood flow in the aorta. And it requires a prosthetic or artificial fabric graft sewn in to replace the aorta.
Open aneurysm repair is very durable. We know that it’s very durable, but it comes with some upfront cost in terms of the potential complications because it’s a bigger procedure than a stent graft procedure would be.
All the branches that go to the kidneys, the liver, the intestines, the extremities are all part of the aorta. And so the complications of an open aortic operation are directly related to how much and where the graft is going to need to go in and how much aorta is going to need to be clamped and replaced.
Open aortic surgery usually requires several months of rehabilitation and recovery. Most people feel back to themselves after somewhere between three and six months.
I think our Aortic Center is unique in that we have two nice hybrid rooms. You can do endovascular or catheter-based aortic procedures. You can do open aortic operations in them; the big incisions and reconstructions. All these are co-located on the second floor of the new UVA tower, essentially where a patient can have any type of procedure on the cardiovascular system.
