Radial artery bypass of distal leg arteries

Okay, Mr. De Silva, hello, nice to see you again. We wanted to talk to you, if you didn't mind, about the experience you had with your diabetic foot problem and the vascular surgery you had to improve matters. When did it all start? It started on the 8th of February 2013, when I had a blister on my right foot. Then it travelled to the 8th, I got a bone infection and then it punctured my second toe. I had to be in hospital, I was admitted to hospital on the 4th of August 2014. I suffered a heart attack during my stay in hospital, I had to have a stent inserted into my heart. Lots of things, lots of things going on. Lots of things, so I recovered and I was still under the treatment of the foot clinic, under the Professor of Archaeology at the moment. Yeah. And after I had had my pass on the 18th of April, 2016, after I had my pass and they removed the wing from my left leg, I noticed on the 6th of July that I had a little blister on my left foot, and then I was still attending the diabetic clinic at Maida Way where Jane recommended me back to St. Mary's to Professor Jonathan Balachi to have a look at the foot and there they noticed that the toe was turning black and the tissues were dying so So the foot clinic decided to play the patient game, to wait for the toe to fall by itself. But ultimately it affected the second toe. And then the third, it was... It was getting worse and worse. It was getting worse and worse. And it was affecting the third toe. That's the time when I decided, when I was referred to the vascular team to have an angiogram. I had an angiogram and then it was discovered that there was a blockage in my left foot. I did see that myself when they were doing the angiogram. The blockage was in your lower leg, wasn't it? It was in the lower leg, next to the ankle, yeah. And there was a blockage very low down in your leg. Yes, it was in the... Just above the ankle. Just above the ankle, yeah. And we needed to work out a strategy where we can get more blood to your foot. That's right, yes. To stop the process of it dying. Yes. And then try to effect some healing. Yeah, and to save the foot as well. Save the foot, exactly. Prevent an amputation. Yeah, I did have about three angiograms, two from the abdomen and one from the back of the calf. We really couldn't get an endovascular way, we call it, to get blood into the foot. Yes. But then we looked at another strategy, a bypass strategy. That's right, yeah, that was the last option. We like to use vein, if we possibly can, and use your own vein from the same leg to bypass the blockage you get more blood flowing down into the foot. That's right. Unfortunately you didn't have a vein either because that was taken for your heart bypass. Yeah. So in the end we used your arm radial artery. Yeah. Your own artery from your arm. My own artery from the thing. The operation was a success. Very happy with it. I did have I did a duplex and after the operation, everything seems to be flowing fine now, yeah. I've been regularly being monitored at the foot clinic to check the flow and the pulse. I'm quite happy with what's happening. This pattern of disease where the arteries are okay up to the knee, from the groin up to the knee, knee and then you have disease or narrowing or blockages on the lower legs it's it's one of the typical types of peripheral vascular disease we call in diabetic patients so we have a number of strategies that have become there and your strategy is very unusual using radial artery to bypass but it seems to have worked very well for us. Yeah it has worked for me. So I'm very happy Dr. Jaffar and Dr. Kat has done a very good job and I'm very happy with the outcome of the operation was and I would advise people to go to it.