Endovascular Stent Surgery Health Article

Definition

Endovascular stent surgery is a minimally invasive surgical procedure that uses advanced technology and instrumentation to treat such disorders of the circulatory system as blockage or damage to blood vessels caused by the build up of plaque (fatty deposits, calcium deposits, and scar tissue) in the arteries, a condition called atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries). The surgeon may recommend the placement of an endovascular stent, a small wire-mesh tube that surgeons call a scaffold, in an affected artery. The procedure may be done in conjunction with cleaning or repairing the artery. The twofold procedure opens, enlarges, and supports artery walls for a long-lasting improvement in blood flow and a decrease in the risk of heart attack or stroke. In endovascular stent surgery (endo, within, and vascular, blood vessel), all of the work done by the surgeon is within the blood vessels themselves. Nearly all of the medium-sized and large blood vessels in the body's vascular system can be accessed from within the vessels. This fact has contributed to a rapid increase in the performance of endovascular stent surgery.

Purpose

The purpose of endovascular stent surgery is to improve or restore the flow of blood and oxygen throughout the body, a process called coronary revascularization. Endovascular stent surgery is used most often to correct the narrowing in medium-sized and large arteries blocked by plaque. Stents have been used in coronary arteries, the carotid arteries in the neck, and renal (kidney) or biliary (gall bladder) arteries. They are rarely used for smaller arteries in the legs, for example, or other smaller vessels in the body.

Endovascular stenting is also the newest treatment for such emergency vascular events, as abdominal or thoracic (related to chest and lung area) aortic aneurysms. Aortic aneurysms are life-threatening bulges in the walls of the aorta, the largest artery in the body, usually the result of progressive atherosclerosis.