BY OLIVIA MIWIL - 9 SEPTEMBER 2014 @ 8:01 AM
Patients with abdominal aortic aneurysm can now undergo a minimally invasive procedure, writes Olivia Miwil
CHIN Nai Thon has been suffering from hypertension for 10 years. The 74-year-old is on medication for this condition but does not suffer from other illnesses. However, recently, the doctor found his blood pressure reading too high.
His son, Billy Chin Wee Leong, said his father was admitted to the Duchess Of Kent hospital in Sandakan for monitoring and to discover the cause. It was found that Nai Thon had an enlarged abdominal blood vessel, a condition known as abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA).
“The doctor said my father needed surgery. If the swollen vessel were to burst, he could bleed to death. We could see a bulge in his stomach,” said Billy.
“We were also told the surgery could only be done in Kuala Lumpur. We were worried because the doctor told us the condition was like a time bomb. The longer we delayed the operation, the greater the risk to my father’s life.”
CHRONIC HYPERTENSION
A few days later, the Chins were told a visiting consultant vascular surgeon, Dr Benjamin Leong Dak Keung from Kuala Lumpur, was willing to do the operation at Queen Elizabeth Hospital 2 in Kota Kinabalu.
Working with an in-house medical team, Dr Leong performed endovascular aneurysm repair (Evar) for Nai Thon in May.
“My father had a speedy recovery after the surgery. He could walk independently on the second day and was discharged on the fourth day. Now, he lives a normal life but takes extra precaution with food intake and practises an active lifestyle to control his blood pressure,” said Billy.
Dr Leong, who is now a surgeon at Queen Elizabeth 2, said AAA affects four or five per cent of the population. Common predisposed factors contributing to this are a history of chronic hypertension and atherosclerosis although there may be other causes, including trauma and other connective tissue disorders. While it usually affects elderly men, women and young people are also at risk.
“Aneurysm in this situation refers to a main blood vessel in the abdomen which swells by more than half of its normal diameter. If it ruptures, patients could bleed to death,” he added.
The condition is usually asymptomatic until the blood vessel expands or ruptures. An expanding AAA causes sudden severe and constant low back, flank, abdominal, or groin pain. At least 65 per cent of patients with a ruptured AAA die of sudden cardiovascular collapse before arriving at hospital.
Evar can fix aneurysms bigger than 5.5cm while reducing the perioperative mortality from 4.7 per cent to 1.7 as compared to open surgery. It is a minimally invasive procedure where the surgeon inserts a stent graft into the aneurysm through a small incision in the groin. The procedure was the first Evar performed in the State.
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