Post-operative complications of aneurysm repair

So, I'm going to talk a bit about post-operative complications of aortic repair, both open major surgery aortic repair and the minimally invasive endovascular aortic repair, or EVAR. And for most patients, post-operative complications are a really important factor in their decision making about which way they want to have their operation performed. So for EVAR, the common post-operative complications are really fairly minor, I'm pleased to say. So most patients have small cuts or even just a needle puncture over the arteries in their groin and those can become bruised. Sometimes they can they can leak out lymphatic fluid called a seroma for a few days and obviously they run the risk of infections which are nearly always treated with oral or at the worst intravenous antibiotics for a couple of days. So there's not too much to be concerned about in terms of the immediate complications. Open surgery is obviously a much bigger deal because you're making a cut right the way down the length of the patient's abdomen and that is associated with much more significant and sometimes life-threatening complications. So any operation which involves clamping the aorta and performing this opening of the abdomen or a laparotomy would always talk to patients about the risk of major bleeding but would also talk to them about the risk of lack of blood flow to certain critical areas such as the legs so some people wake up and they have a problem with lack of blood flow to one or other legs which needs immediate treatment or sometimes to the gut particularly the colon and the lower part of the gut is very susceptible to reduction in blood flow during an open surgical repair so we always talk to people about that. I think in both groups there can be complications associated with the kidneys and a reduction in kidney function and in the longer term the complications tend to fall more into the into the realm of the endovascular repair because we know that these are not as durable as open repair in the long term and so each and every year patients who've had an endovascular approach to their aortic repair could expect to have about a 5% risk of needing further treatment to make sure the stent graft is working properly.