Arterial Disease

INTRODUCTION

Arteries carry oxygenated blood from the heart to the organs and periphery. Diseases affecting the arteries can cause narrowing or blockages, and also cause them to weaken their walls and expand.

Arterial blockages to blood vessels supplying the brain may result in stroke, and to the limbs may result in pain, tissue loss, gangrene and amputation. Arterial blockages are related to atherosclerosis, which is in turn commonly due to smoking, high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol and diabetes.

Arteries which begin to expand are called aneurysms, and they are at risk of rupture and life threatening bleeding, or causing blockages to downstream branches and result in limb loss.

Dr Peter Chu provides timely, effective and comprehensive management of all arterial occlusive and aneurysmal disease with standard open surgery and also with newer interventional or minimally invasive techniques such as balloon angioplasty and endoluminal stent graft repair.

Some examples of surgery for arterial diseases include clearing the artery in the neck for stroke prevention (carotid endarterectomy), replacing an aneurysm with a synthetic graft to prevent rupture (aortic aneurysm repair), and performing a bypass operation in the leg for blocked arteries.