Vascular surgery involves the treatment of blood vessels. The blood vessels are mainly arteries and veins. The function of artery is to bring the blood out from the heart to supply oxygen to organs throughout the body. The function of vein is to return the blood from the organs back to the heart.
Diseases of arteries can be caused by blockage of the artery, for example peripheral arterial disease (PAD) that occurs very commonly in diabetic patients, and lead to amputations.
Another type of arterial disease involves the weakening of the wall of the artery, the leads to aneurysm, for example, abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) which can lead to death if it gets too big and ruptures.
Diseases of veins can also be caused by blockage of the vein, for example, deep vein thrombosis (DVT). It happens when blood clots form in the deep veins and can lead to serious problem such as pulmonary embolism (PE) if the blood clot breaks off and migrate to the lungs.
Other type of vein disease involves the incompetent vein valves that causes reflux or leakage in the blood flow, that results in the increased pressure in the veins and distension of veins. Examples of these are varicose vein, pelvic congestion syndrome in females and varicoceles in males.
Conditions that involve both the artery and vein include arterio-venous malformation (AVM) and arterio-venous fistula (AVF) Patients with renal failure on haemodialysis have AVF created for cannulation access during haemodialysis.
Prepared by
Dato' Dr Ho Teik Kok
MBBS(Malaya), MRCS(Edin&Eng), FRCS(UK), PhD(London), CCT(UK)
Consultant Vascular/Endovascular Surgeon