A traumatic injury to the aorta is one of the most deadly injuries from a vehicle crash, but surgeons from the University of Maryland Medical Center are using a less invasive procedure they say offers hope for survival.
“It takes one of the top things that are a threat to their life off the table,” said Dr. David Neschis, a vascular surgeon and lead author of a review of the aortic injury treatments appearing Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine.
During a car crash, the part of the aorta — the body’s main artery — not attached to the wall can shift, tearing the artery. About 85 percent of accident victims who sustain this kind of injury die at the scene, Neschis said.
But there are likely other major injuries that doctors must attend to, he said, making the initial response more complicated and risky.
“A minimally invasive approach in these types of cases can be a valuable life-saving option for these patients,” Dr. Thomas Scalea, physicians-in-chief at the R. Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center, said in a statement.
The traditional way to fix this injury is by opening up the chest and inserting a fabric tube.
However, University of Maryland Medical Center surgeons use an endograft procedure, where they insert a catheter into an artery in the leg and steer it toward the aorta. They then release a self-expanding tube that creates a new lining.
This method reduces recovery time and risks of death and paralysis, Neschis said.
The technology isn’t new, but not all hospitals use it, Neschis said. Shock Trauma doctors see a higher volume of these traumatic injuries and have performed 39 of these less invasive procedures since 2005.
“I think the paradigm is shifting,” he said, “[and it’s] being performed more commonly.”
