Ilio-femoral Bypass Surgery

As I said in my last post that I was going to show you a picture of what they will be doing during surgery.I have the picture that Dr E drew for us.I have also taken some info from the internet and I will add my own from what Dr E told us.

We know that he will have general anesthesia.They will make an incision in the middle of the abdomen to reach the iliac artery.He did say that it will start just below his bellybutton and down to his pelvic area.In this incision they are also hoping to fix the hernia that is just above his bellybutton which he developed from his open heart surgery last year.

Dr E will then make an incision over the blocked area of the artery. That will be the second incision.It will be from his hip to the middle of his thigh.It might be lower than that and go to his knee.He will then move skin, muscle, and other tissue out of the way.

He will place clamps on the artery at each end of the blocked section. He will then use a graft to bypass the blocked part of your artery. At the moment there are many collateral's that are moving blood to the lower half of his leg. The graft will be a vein taken from the lower part of his right leg.They did the vein mapping and found that there are not any viable veins on the left which is nice in a way cause then only one leg will have incisions on it. We are not sure when that incision will be made.It may be the first one as they have to prepare the vein for bypass.

All of these procedures will be done on the same day.
After the graft is sewn in place, he will make sure the blood flow to your lower leg is good. Then he will close the incisions. He will do an x-ray called an arteriogram to make sure that the graft is working properly.

Below is the picture that Dr.E drew for us. The squiggly lines on either side of the vein graft are the collateral's.
I hope you all have a better understanding of what his surgery will entail.He said that he will be in ICU for 2-3 days and then the rest of his stay will be on the peds floor.Because of all the issues Broc has with being very susceptible to viruses and bacterias he will be in isolation for the entire stay at the hospital.He said without any complications he will be there for a week and then total recovery time will be about 3 months.

If you have any questions please feel free to ask me.Closer to the time we may have some more detailed info and we will share it with you.