Winter 2017

Focus on Vascular Disease

The Temple Heart & Vascular Institute newsletter offers news, insight and collaboration for our colleagues in cardiovascular research and clinical care.

Collaborative care and leading-edge research characterize Temple’s approach to vascular disease. Temple treated approximately 1,500 patients for vascular conditions in FY’15, often conducting advanced, minimally invasive repair of dangerous conditions like aortic aneurysm. Our vascular specialists collaborate across fields to tailor care to the needs of our community, a population in which vascular diseases such as atherosclerosis are often associated with other conditions like diabetes and chronic kidney disease.

With the highest level of basic research funding for vascular surgery in the region, and a multidisciplinary focus on underlying processes such as inflammation, we can home in on new treatments and shepherd them quickly from bench to bedside. To learn more about our work, contact Temple Vascular & Endovascular Surgery at 215-707-6144.

Bench to Bedside and Back: Understanding Inflammation and Vascular Pathology through Collaborative Research

A team of researchers at Temple’s Center for Metabolic Disease Research (CMDR) has earned an NIH R01 multi-PI grant of more than $2 million to investigate the mechanism by which chronic kidney disease accelerates vascular diseases like atherosclerosis. Patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) have extremely high rates of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality, 10 to 30 times higher than the general population, and are more likely to die of cardiovascular disease than renal failure. CKD, which affects up to 10 percent of the world’s population, causes hyperuremia, known to accelerate atherosclerosis, but the precise pathways are not well understood. Continue Reading >

Profile: Temple Limb Salvage Center

Diabetes and vascular conditions like peripheral arterial disease (PAD) are the two leading causes of poor blood flow leading to ischemia and other complications that require amputation of a limb. Racial and socioeconomic disparities remain an issue in the field of amputation: black patients with PAD, for example, are two to four times more likely than white patients with PAD to undergo a limb amputation, and are significantly less likely to receive attempted limb-salvaging care before they do. Continue Reading >

Advanced Endovascular Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm Repair

Over the past decade, endovascular repair of abdominal aortic aneurysm has become an increasingly viable option for patients who should avoid the risks of open surgery. Open repair of abdominal aortic aneurysm has a perioperative mortality rate of 3 to 4.8 percent, compared with 0.5 to 1.8 percent for endovascular repair, although long-term mortality appears to be similar. Some endovascular repairs can now be accomplished with no traditional incisions at all. Continue Reading >

Recognizing and Treating Inferior Vena Cava Thrombosis

In a recent paper in JACC Cardiovascular Interventions, my colleagues and I describe the etiology, diagnosis and treatment of inferior vena cava thrombosis in an effort to raise awareness of this rare yet morbid condition, which remains under-diagnosed. Up to 90 percent of those with untreated IVC thrombosis experience post-thrombotic syndrome and 45 percent experience disabling venous claudication. The mortality rate is twice that of deep vein thrombosis (DVT) of the lower extremities. IVC thrombosis also occurs in 60 to 80 percent of patients with congenital IVC defects (who make up 0.5 to 1 percent of the population). Continue Reading >

Three-dimensional Imaging Enhances Our Understanding of Aortic Conditions

Cardiovascular imaging, especially imaging of the aorta, lends itself extremely well to advanced three-dimensional reconstruction. Two-dimensional X-rays, ultrasound images and others are processed and reconstructed with color, shading and depth. These techniques enable very precise measurements of blood vessels to aid physicians in providing accurate diagnosis as well as planning and performing treatments—both surgical and non-surgical. Continue Reading >