New surgery technique saves blood clot patient

By The Nation

Published on January 22, 2010

Surgeons at Mahidol University's Siriraj Hospital - using a new technique for the first time have saved the legs, and maybe the life, of a patient stricken with a severe blood clot or arterial embolism.

Head of the Vascular Surgery Division, Dr Pramuk Muthirangkul, said 20 to 30 embolism patients were admitted to the hospital each year, most with a blood clot in their chest area that had moved to and clogged a leg artery. If treated too late, the condition could cause uraemia [poison from kidney failure] to spread from the arteryclogged leg, possibly with fatal results.

The usual treatment included injecting the patient with anticoagulants and surgery to remove the clot, he said.

In this case, the toxin was already spreading to the blood circulation of patient Orawan Kittipan when doctors applied a new prototype treatment, published only last November in the journal of the European Society for Vascular Surgery.

Surgeons placed a small tube into the clogged leg artery to drain the venous blood into a hemodialysis machine, which then sent cleaned blood back to the Orawan's body through a vein in the neck.

A doctor then inserted a balloontip tube to remove the blood clot from the leg's artery. Finally, the patient was put under surveillance for any postsurgery complication.

Pramuk said this method was highly effective and cheaper in treating patients suffering severe acute arterial embolism and uraemia in the legs. It could also be applied to clots in the leg caused by other factors such as injuries, he said.

Siriraj Hospital will relay knowledge of the technique to other medical centres through a workshop for surgeons, he added.

-- The Nation 2010-01-22

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I don't fully get it, I suspect the reporting isn't quite 100% translated accurately, but in any case it is great that medical advances are being made.

Thanks!

Indeed something lost in translation here; the "venous" blood from the artery and sent to a dialysis machine....

The catheter removal of clots is a known procedure but the dialysis angle is new to me...

The dialysis machine requires a constant high flow of a relatively large volume of blood per minute to operate so would not really be able to work with a small volume of blood extracted from the blocked section of the artery..

Great news anyway if there is a procedure that works effectively.

This is not " NEW" at all.

the technique is used for almost 30 years.

just google for:

Inferior Vena Cava Filters

Filtering the blood is done for ages.

IMHO a typical Thai Balloon

i don't understand these things. I have heard on tv that in holland and probably all over the world people loose their legs while they could be treated in a other way. maybe this is the way the were talking about.

few years ago they said in holland only 1 hospital used a method that could save the patients leg!!! don't get this either, what a bastards. I know most expats want to trash the thai hospitals but have stayed in thai and european hospitals and was pretty satisfied with thai hospitals.

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