Word: stertzer
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After Robert had been mildly sedated and his leg anesthetized, Cardiologist Simon Stertzer inserted a narrow, hollow Teflon tube called a guiding catheter into an artery in the leg (although an arm artery can be used instead). Working the catheter up through the blood vessels, he reached the opening of the obstructed heart artery. Then Stertzer inserted a narrower and more flexible hollow catheter, with a tiny deflated balloon near its tip, through the Teflon tube and into the heart artery itself. Guided by X rays that determined precisely where the artery was blocked, he positioned the balloon exactly...
...make bypass surgery feasible. Explains Cardiac Surgeon Eugene Wallsh: "When you have too many obstructions in an artery, you can't bypass each one. But with the balloon catheter, you can open up some blocks and then bypass others." Wallsh has done just that in six patients. Adds Stertzer: "It might also be possible to reopen bypass grafts that have closed down...
...Richard Myler, they are working to refine the equipment and determine which patients could benefit from the procedure. Equally important, the doctors are trying to assess the long-range effects. For example, do the arteries close down again, and when? Where does the plaque eventually go? Stertzer speculates about a possible "self-healing" mechanism. Indeed, when the arteries of a few patients were re-examined a month or so after balloon dilatation, doctors could not see where the original narrowings had been. The same phenomenon has been noticed in some of the hundreds of patients who have undergone plaque compression...
Before they know if a similar percentage holds true for heart arteries, doctors will have to use the balloon dilatation technique on hundreds of cardiac patients. Then, says Stertzer, "if 80% of the arteries are open after a year, we're into a revolution in cardiology...
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