After a soccer match he could no longer walk, due to a rare arterial disease recognized by the vascular surgeons of the Irccs San Gerardo dei Tintori in Monza who, thanks to a complex operation, managed to save the patient's right leg. It is the story of a 35-year-old Sicilian, who has now returned to “a normal life without further ailments”.
About a year earlier – they say from the Brianza hospital – the young man, resident in Sicily, had suffered intense pain in his right leg during a soccer match. The disease had spontaneously regressed, but since then walking had become difficult due to the pain which 'paralysed' the patient after a few steps. The tests he underwent – we read in a note from San Gerardo – made it possible to diagnose a rare pathology, called adventitial cystic disease, affecting the popliteal artery. The pathology typically affects young people and consists of the formation of multiple cysts in the thickness of the arterial wall, which cause compression on the vessel, reducing the passage of blood. Over time, the cysts tend to grow, increasingly pressing the vessel that runs behind the knee and worsening the passage of blood, to the point of endangering the vitality of the leg.
“Surgical therapy – explains Vittorio Segramora, director of Vascular Surgery at the Irccs of Monza – consists in completely eliminating the section of artery involved in the cystic degeneration and replacing it with a vein taken from the patient himself. This is a delicate operation – he underlines – made difficult by the tenacious adhesions that the cysts determine with the adjacent structures and which require meticulous and careful isolation of the nerves (sciatic-popliteal-external nerve) and veins (popliteal vein), which must be preserved to guarantee the normal functionality of the leg”. Segramora, with the help of vascular surgeon Savino Pasquadibisceglie, together with the anesthetist Margherita Scanziani, the nurses and all the operating room staff, conducted an operation that lasted approximately 3 hours, managing to save the patient's limb which after a few days was been discharged.
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