Posted on 06/30/2007 7:34:17 AM PDT by CarrotAndStick
NEW DELHI: The world’s most common procedure for clearing blocked kidney arteries may actually end up severely damaging kidney function.
For the first time ever, researchers from North Carolina’s Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Centre have shown that the debris of cholesterol and plaques, released during angioplasty and stenting of kidney arteries, get lodged in crucial blood vessels and impair kidney function. After analysing 28 angioplasty cases, researchers used a protection device to temporarily block the vessel at the site of the angioplasty and stenting. After the procedure, and while the protection system was still in place, researchers took a small sample of blood trapped by the protection device.
The artery was then aspirated and flushed out to remove any remaining particles. Laboratory analyses found a mean of 2,000 particles captured per blood sample, many of them large enough to block the small vessels in the kidney. "This is the first data in humans to show that debris released during angioplasty of the kidney arteries can be harmful to kidney function," said Matthew Edwards, lead researcher and an assistant professor of surgery.
"It raises important questions about how to safely perform this very common procedure. Our study starts to define the limitations of this seemingly simple and innocuous procedure," he added.
According to Dr Anant Kumar, Senior Consultant, Urology and Kidney Transplant Dept., at Apollo Hospital, New Delhi, a renal angioplasty is a way of relieving a blockage in the renal artery, the main blood vessel to the kidney, without having an operation.
A fine plastic tube, called a catheter, is inserted through a blockage in an artery, and a special balloon on the catheter is then inflated, to open up the blockage and allow more blood to flow through it.
Kidney arteries often require the insertion of a tiny hollow tube called a stent to keep it open after the procedure. "When surgeons conducting the angioplasty remove the plaque, a hardened chunk of cholesterol and cells blocking the flow of blood through a vessel, some of it breaks into tiny particles and is flown to the kidney. Depending on debris size, the kidney gets affected. The already sick kidney then suffers more and finally becomes dead," Dr Kumar said.
According to Dr Edwards, taking patients off aspirin before a procedure may lead to worse results. Also, the size of the stent may also play a role in the debris-release effects. In India, renal angioplasty is yet to catch up in a big way.
OK...that’s it: I’m not having an angioplasty.
>> OK...that’s it: I’m not having an angioplasty.
Keep in mind, they’re not talking about coronary angioplasty, they’re talking about angioplasty of KIDNEY arteries.
Have to build a “trash bag” to catch and pull the cholesterol back out after finishing the procedure.
Very interesting. Thanks for posting. (ping)
Makes no difference to me. I have one kidney, and I’m not interested in finding out if it does the same thing after a cardiac angioplasty.
*shudder*
Gotcha.
Best wishes for good function in the one you have left.
Could you translate that into English, please? Thanks.
Long Verse, enjoy:
Body Worlds 3: The Anatomical Exhibition of Real Human Bodies at OMSI
Address:http://www.omsi.edu/visit/featured/bodyworlds/
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