Improve blood-flow through leg

Hi everyone, my name is Mohamed Abdel-Hamid. I am a vascular and endovascular consultant surgeon at St. George's Hospital. Today I'm going to talk to you about improving the blood flow to the leg through something called spaphiciofemoral artery recanalization, which in simple terms Symptoms mean opening an occluded artery in the thigh to improve the blood flow. Patient could be complaining of symptoms in the form of pain in the calf with walking and it depends on the severity of the symptoms that this distance will be shorter or longer. other patients might complain of critical symptoms like pain in the foot at night or developing ulcer or gangrene of one of the toes or in the foot. The patient will require some sort of imaging like ultrasound scan to detect the blood flow in the arteries of the leg and the thigh. If there is narrowing of the superficial femoral artery, which is the artery in the thigh, or there is occlusion or block, this could be opened up with a balloon and stent if required. This procedure could be done under local anaesthetic and in some cases as a day case by giving local anaesthetic to the groin and puncturing the artery with a needle and trying to go through the narrowing or the block with the wire and then stretch this narrowing or block with a balloon. Sometimes we use balloons that have drugs coated on the surface of the balloon. These drugs get infused in the wall of the artery and the aim is to reduce the risk of the block coming back. Sometimes we require to jail this block with a stent in order to keep the artery wide and open. This usually causes relief of the symptoms within a few hours or days and if the patient is having problem during walking sometimes the patient gets relief of symptoms on the same day. Unfortunately there are some possible side effects including bleeding from the groin or rupture of the artery during the balloon stretch or dislodgement of the plug into the arteries of the leg which can cause worse shortage of blood. That's why not every patient is indicated and only indicated patients will require this intervention and this intervention should be done by someone who is experienced in doing this intervention in order to get the best out. you you