Forest Hills Hospital is first Hospital in Queens, Nassau and Suffolk Counties to offer New Stent Graft Therapy

An abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA), a dangerous bulge in the aorta, the body’s largest artery, is a potentially life-threatening condition that affects over one million people in the United States. While only 15 percent of these individuals ever receive an official diagnosis, at least half those diagnosed never receive treatment.

An inexpensive ultrasound exam can identify the existence of AAA though it's infrequently diagnosed because patients typically remain symptom-free until the aneurysm ruptures. Unfortunately, if the aneurysm bursts, the chance of survival is very small.

While that is unsettling news, Omid Rahmani, MD, director of endovascular surgery at Forest Hills explained that for patients who do receive an AAA diagnosis there are more treatment options than ever before.

 

Dr. Rahmani discusses treatement options for an abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) with a patient.

 

“Fifteen to 20 years ago, open surgery was the only option patients had, but we’ve came along way since then,” Dr. Rahmani said, referencing the use of stent graft therapy to treat aneurysms. “Stent grafts began being used about two decades ago and every few years, modifications have improved upon the process of treating aneurysms.”

A recent modification is the new Talent Abdominal Stent Graft, which enables physicians to treat aneurysms that previously required open surgery. The FDA has approved the release of the new abdominal stent for later this month, although it has been previously used in medical trials. Forest Hills Hospital is the only hospital in Queens, Nassau and Suffolk counties to use the Talent Abdominal Stent Graft to treat AAA.

“It’s important for people to realize that they can get the latest cutting-edge treatment right in their own neighborhood,” Dr. Rahmani said. He explained that despite technological advances over the past two decades, there were still many patients who did not qualify for stent graft therapy. This latest modification enables physicians to expand the criteria for the type of patient they’re able to treat with minimally invasive techniques.

“I had a patient, a man in his 60s, who went to another institution and left without a diagnosis. He came to Forest Hills and we found that he had two significant medical issues -- a cancerous tumor in his stomach and a very large aortic aneurysm that measured 8.5 centimeters in an aorta 1.5 centimeters in diameter,” Dr. Rahmani said.

That posed a series of significant problems for the patient. “A general surgeon could not operate on the stomach cancer due to the size of the aneurysm and the fear that it might burst,” Dr. Rahmani said. “And trying to address both medical concerns during the same surgery wasn’t advisable either as the open operation increased the risk of infection.

“Because of the size of the aneurysm, it had to be handled first,” Dr. Rahmani said. “With an open surgical procedure we’d have to wait a few weeks before we could operate on the stomach cancer, and that was a wait the patient couldn’t afford.”

Dr. Rahmani said the new stent graft enabled him to treat the aneurysm so that the patient could safely undergo the cancer surgery shortly thereafter and not face increased wait time for recovery. “Without this new stent, we wouldn’t have been able to treat this aneurysm with minimally invasive techniques because it was simply too big.”

Stent graft therapy utilizes minimally invasive techniques that improve survival rates with faster recovery times and reduced rates of infection. For more information on Forest Hills Hospital’s endovascular program please call 718-820-9234.