Patient Resources
Patient Vascular News
Your Vascular System
Your vascular system is made up of vessels that carry your blood throughout your body. Arteries carry oxygen-rich blood away from your heart. Veins carry oxygen-poor blood back to your heart. Your blood leaves the left side of the heart and is pumped out to the rest of your body. The main artery from your heart is called the aorta. As your blood travels throughout your body, it enters smaller and smaller blood vessels, reaching every cell, dropping off nutrients and picking up waste products and carbon dioxide. Your blood then starts the trip back in your veins, entering larger and larger ones as it goes, passing through your kidneys and liver on the way to drop off waste products. The blood eventually arrives back at the right side of your heart to start the trip all over again.
Quality over Quantity
As we age, our arteries tend to thicken, get stiffer, and narrow. This is called arteriosclerosis. A form of arteriosclerosis is atherosclerosis, which is the build-up of plaque and cholesterol in large and medium-sized arteries. A narrowing of the arteries from the build-up of plaque can lead to coronary heart disease, and can cause a heart attack when this occurs in the blood vessels leading to the heart.
Design Focused
The same situation in the arteries leading to the brain can cause strokes. Narrowing of the arteries in other places, such as your legs, can cause what is called Peripheral Arterial Disease, or PAD. PAD can lead to sores, pain with walking, or amputation. When the smaller arteries are affected it is called arteriolosclerosis.
Vascular Conditions
Vascular conditions affect the veins and arteries in your body, which conduct oxygen to every living cell. Think of your veins and arteries as expressways or rivers. When there are traffic jams or road construction, or when dams break, trouble ensues. But in most cases, vascular conditions are highly treatable, often without surgery.
It is important to see a vascular surgeon, even when surgery is not needed. Vascular surgeons specialize in treatments of every kind of vascular problem except those of the heart (treated by cardiovascular surgeons) and the brain (treated by neurosurgeons). A common condition such as atherosclerosis may show up in the legs, for example, but affects the whole body.
Vascular surgeons will talk to you about how exercise, diet and medication can be the first step in regaining your health. When surgery is needed, vascular surgeons are trained in all types of interventions, not just one or two.
Vascular Tests
What kinds of vascular tests are most common? What happens when you have one? Will it hurt? Will it mean you need surgery? Following are the most commonly prescribed vascular tests. Be sure to ask your surgeon if you still have questions.
When it comes to treatments for vascular conditions, there is good news
When it comes to treatments for vascular conditions, there is good news. Many vascular conditions are quite manageable, if you see a physician early. Vascular surgery and procedures are improving all the time, and sometimes no surgery is necessary. For example, in the early stages of peripheral arterial disease, the prescription is just to take regular walks.
