HOUSTON, Texas (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Millions of Americans may be at risk for heart attack or stroke and not even know it. A pain in your leg may be a sign of something much more serious -- even fatal. Ivanhoe explains a new way to fight peripheral arterial disease (PAD).
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Marjo Madden thought her age was catching up with her! "I couldn't walk any more than 50 feet without sitting down," Madden recalls.
But it wasn't age. It was PAD that was slowing her down. "I had a very bad burning sensation in the calves of my legs," Madden says.
Just as the blood flow in a heart attack patient is cut off by plaque, in PAD, blood flow throughout the body can be cut off. PAD is treated now with a balloon or stent, but for some patients the plaque is too hard, or there's too much of it. Until now, these patients would face invasive surgery … or worse.
"They have to have something done," Imran Mohiuddin, M.D., a vascular surgeon at Methodist DeBakey Heart Center in Houston, told Ivanhoe. "Otherwise, they're at risk of losing that limb. So this is sort of -- we call it limb salvage."
The FDA has just approved a vibrating catheter that gives doctors another tool to help patients who are running out of options. "The catheter works like a miniature jack hammer inside the blood vessel, and it comes up against an inclusion and then it starts vibrating," Dr. Mohiuddin explains. "Through its vibrations, it's able to slowly burrow a hole."
Sensors detect tissue, so even though the vibrating catheter is strong enough to break through plaster, it won't go through tissue. "It breaks up the particles into very, very microscopic particles, as small as a red blood cell," Dr. Mohiuddin explains.
Once the catheter is through, doctors will use angioplasty or a stent to keep the artery open. "Often times, we would have to just abandon that case and actually perform a bypass operation," Dr. Mohiuddin says.
Recovery time is just a day and for patients like Madden, this could be one way to help stop the pain and get moving again! "However much the Lord has given me, I'm going to use it to the fullest," Madden says.
The vibrating catheter was just approved by the FDA for use in the legs. The next step is to get it approved for other arteries. Doctors in Europe are already using this procedure successfully in the heart.
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