To determine the efficacy of using stents and stent grafts for treatment of hemodialysis graft-related stenoses which have failed angioplasty. This retrospective study was composed of 51 patients with polytetrafluoroethylene hemodialysis grafts who underwent angioplasty of a graft-related stenosis but subsequently required insertion of a stent or stent graft. The study group included 40 patient...

PURPOSE To describe the diagnosis and morphology of abnormal fistulas between dialysis grafts and adjacent native veins in five patients and to discuss their clinical significance. PATIENTS AND METHODS Five patients with PTFE loop-type forearm dialysis grafts were found to have graft-to-vein fistulas in the presence of venous outflow stenosis or occlusion. Three patients underwent surgical re...

PURPOSE To report the use of a new self-expanding endograft for percutaneous treatment of iatrogenic subclavian artery perforations. CASE REPORTS The subclavian artery of 2 patients was inadvertently cannulated during percutaneous attempts to implant a permanent pacemaker in one and catheterize the subclavian vein in the other. Because both patients had serious comorbidities, endovascular rep...

Aortoenteric fistula is a rare but potentially fatal condition causing massive gastrointestinal bleeding. In particular, double primary aortoenteric fistulae are vanishingly rare. We encountered a 75-year-old male patient suffering from abdominal pain, hematochezia, hematemesis, and hypotension. His computed tomography images showed abdominal aortic aneurysm and suspected aortoenteric fistulae....

In the last decade, a superior mesenteric-intrahepatic left portal shunt (Rex shunt) has been reported for successful management of extrahepatic portal vein obstruction in children. However, in adults, a mesocaval shunt has been generally performed for the surgical management of extrahepatic portal vein obstruction because of the complexity of the underlying disease and the difficulty of the su...

BACKGROUND A variety of laparoscopic procedures for the repair of abdominal wall hernias have been described. The repair described in this paper represents a modification and improvement of one approach. METHODS Our technique employs an Origin Tacker (Origin Medsystems, Inc, Menlo Park, CA) and a Gore suture passer (W. L. Gore, Flagstaff, AZ) to secure an expanded polytetrafluoroethylene (ePT...

Perforation of coronary arteries is a relatively rare yet life-threatening complication of percutaneus coronary interventions and is encountered in approximately 0.5% of these procedures. According to the type of coronary perforation, various methods of correction are employed, ranging from conservative approach to emergency cardiac surgery. Coronary stent-grafts are composed of two metal stent...

This study of 533 vascular access sites for long-term hemodialysis in patients with end-stage renal disease, accumulating more than 12,000 patient months, indicated that primary arteriovenous fistula (AVF) is the procedure of choice. The group receiving primary AVF had the greatest duration of patency: 84% at three years compared to 70% for the group receiving polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) gra...

This article reports a successful clinical regimen of treatment for the Class II furcation defect. Twenty-eight patients with molar teeth demonstrating Class II furcations were treated with regenerative therapy with the goal of regenerating lost interradicular periodontium. The treatment selected included scaling and root planing, surgical flap design that would enable the flap to completely co...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the clinical outcomes with the use of a dual-porosity expanded polytetrafluoroethylene implant for midfacial rejuvenation. DESIGN An institutional review board-approved retrospective chart review was conducted of all patients who underwent implantation with the dual-porosity expanded polytetrafluoroethylene implant between 2001 and 2005. RESULTS A total of 170 patients...