By Artem Nefedov
The Brest resident is a ‘terry’ atherosclerotic, having lesions on his coronary arteries and abdominal aorta (which supply the legs with blood). At the Republican Cardiology Scientific and Practical Centre in Minsk, doctors decided to perform the operation in three arterial sections: on ‘three floors’. It has already been called unique and will certainly go down in the history of medicine.
Several difficult diagnoses initially gave surgeons a perplexing decision on how to proceed. “The peripheral vessels — the femoral arteries — presented the main problem,” explains the Deputy Director of Cardiology Centre, Dr. Vyacheslav Yanushko. “To minimise risk, we operated simultaneously on the heart, the abdominal aorta and the arteries of the lower extremity (from the side of the more apparent ischemia). In such cases, it is necessary to carry out operations simultaneously. If a patient is suffering from pain in both lower limbs, while having apparent coronary artery lesions, an operation only on the dominant ischemia (the lower limbs) may result in death from heart complications. Operating only on the heart may allow gangrene of the lower extremities to begin, due to lack of adequate circulation during surgery. This is the essence of the disease.”
The operation lasted about eight hours, with four surgeons taking part. Three days after surgery, the patient may walk unaided along the street. The Brest resident is now on the mend.
Our Belarusian surgeons are the first in the CIS to perform such an operation, showing that domestic surgery, using the latest technologies, rivals that of the leading countries worldwide.
