Siriraj method can prevent amputation
Pedal bypass method enjoying increasingly high success rate
Siriraj Hospital’s medical team has successfully created a new surgical method that might save many advanced diabetes patients from having to get their foot amputated.
“We have performed surgeries using this new procedure on 40 patients already,” Prof Dr Pramook Mutirangura said at a press conference yesterday. “The success rate is very high.”
Dr Pramook heads the Vascular Surgery Division of the Mahidol University’s Faculty of Medicine at Siriraj Hospital and is part of the team that has developed this new surgical procedure.
Dubbed the pedal bypass with deep venous arterialisation, this surgical method provides blood supply to the ischemic foot through the venous system instead of the arterial system. This improved circulation then allows the foot to heal.
“A piece of glass cut my left foot three years ago, and though I got my wound cleaned on a regular basis, I was told that the foot did not have enough blood to heal and it might have to be amputated. That’s when I decided to look for treatment elsewhere and opted for this pedal bypass at Siriraj Hospital,” Arunee Temeepattana-pongsa, 77, said.
The surgery saved this patient’s foot and she is now able to walk around on her own.
According to Dr Pramook, the hospital’s medical team performed the first pedal bypass surgery in 2002, and of the 26 patients who were treated under this new procedure between 200 and 2009, 73 per cent have enjoyed full recovery.
“In recent years, the success rate has risen further,” Dr Pramook said, adding that the pedal bypass surgery takes about four hours to perform and patients have to stay in hospital for another four to six weeks.
The surgery costs at least Bt50,000, though patients can get it under the universal healthcare scheme, the social security scheme or the civil servant’s medical benefit scheme. This new surgical procedure caught international attention after it was presented at an academic seminar in New York two years ago.
“Since then, we have presented it at several other international seminars,” Pramook said.
