The Change Mariner

Endovascular Therapy To Replace 70% of Conventional Surgery

Yahoo! News:

When Dr. Jeffrey Snell looks at a patient, he sees the complex network of veins and arteries as the route to clearing clogged heart arteries, preventing strokes and keeping bulging vessels from rupturing -- all without major surgery.

Doctors long have used the winding maze of blood vessels in the vascular system to identify and treat blockages in the arteries that feed blood to the heart.

Now an arsenal of newly miniaturized devices and sophisticated digital imaging equipment allow doctors to treat other complicated conditions with minimally invasive procedures where only local anesthesia is needed.

The fast-growing discipline, known as endovascular therapy, could replace up to 70 percent of conventional surgeries by the end of the decade, by some estimates.