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jackshoegazerMedical imaging is amazingly advanced, ladies and gentlemen. At my vascular appointment today, I got to see a full 3D CGI rendering of my chest, including the skeletal and circulatory systems. It was such a very cool experience.
The bad news however is that my superior vena cava is completely occluded, which means almost no blood is getting through. I have a "fibrosing mediastinitis", a ball of scar tissue pinching off the vein. My body has done a great job, my doctor says, of rerouting the blood elsewhere. I have some crazy large veins that no one else has.
The "cure" for my odd blood flow issues is a spiral vein graft, wherein they take a length of the saphenous vein in the leg and wrapped around a stent in a spiral. It is then attached one end to the vena cava above the obstruction and the other end directly into the right atrium, bypassing the obstruction. This completely erases all issues and symptoms. In 1999, all patients who had this procedure were still asymptomatic six years later.
My doctor wants to get the guy who invented the procedure to do it. Unfortunately, he lives in Salt Lake City and is retired. However, the guy's son worked under him and performed this procedure many times. My doctor said he himself can even do it, but would prefer to let someone who does them regularly do it. So, he's going to call up Salt Lake and see what the situation is and get back to me.
Then we find out if my insurance will cover it. Then I decide when to have it done. It's no exact hurry, not quite an emergency - yet. It's pretty major surgery, so I'm thinking sometime in the summer. Maybe not take summer classes this year. I wouldn't need to be on anticoagulants anymore afterward. It would be awesome, amazing, liberating.
Additional reading:
1) Bypass of superior vena cava: Six years' experience with spiral vein graft for obstruction of superior vena cava due to benign and malignant disease
2) Superior Vena Caval Bypass Using the Superficial Femoral Vein for Treatment of Superior Vena Cava Syndrome
3) Superior Vena Cava Bypass Using Spiral Vein Graft - Ministernotomy Technique
P.S. Oddly, when I was first diagnosed with this back in 2001 and had no insurance, the hospital I went to put a stent in and sent me on my way and never mentioned the spiral vein graft. My new vascular doctor seemed kind of surprised they put in a stent because superior vena cava stents almost always fail. It's like they did the bare minimum and kicked me out. Capitalist medical systems rule, people. Get one!
The bad news however is that my superior vena cava is completely occluded, which means almost no blood is getting through. I have a "fibrosing mediastinitis", a ball of scar tissue pinching off the vein. My body has done a great job, my doctor says, of rerouting the blood elsewhere. I have some crazy large veins that no one else has.
The "cure" for my odd blood flow issues is a spiral vein graft, wherein they take a length of the saphenous vein in the leg and wrapped around a stent in a spiral. It is then attached one end to the vena cava above the obstruction and the other end directly into the right atrium, bypassing the obstruction. This completely erases all issues and symptoms. In 1999, all patients who had this procedure were still asymptomatic six years later.
My doctor wants to get the guy who invented the procedure to do it. Unfortunately, he lives in Salt Lake City and is retired. However, the guy's son worked under him and performed this procedure many times. My doctor said he himself can even do it, but would prefer to let someone who does them regularly do it. So, he's going to call up Salt Lake and see what the situation is and get back to me.
Then we find out if my insurance will cover it. Then I decide when to have it done. It's no exact hurry, not quite an emergency - yet. It's pretty major surgery, so I'm thinking sometime in the summer. Maybe not take summer classes this year. I wouldn't need to be on anticoagulants anymore afterward. It would be awesome, amazing, liberating.
Additional reading:
1) Bypass of superior vena cava: Six years' experience with spiral vein graft for obstruction of superior vena cava due to benign and malignant disease
2) Superior Vena Caval Bypass Using the Superficial Femoral Vein for Treatment of Superior Vena Cava Syndrome
3) Superior Vena Cava Bypass Using Spiral Vein Graft - Ministernotomy Technique
P.S. Oddly, when I was first diagnosed with this back in 2001 and had no insurance, the hospital I went to put a stent in and sent me on my way and never mentioned the spiral vein graft. My new vascular doctor seemed kind of surprised they put in a stent because superior vena cava stents almost always fail. It's like they did the bare minimum and kicked me out. Capitalist medical systems rule, people. Get one!
