A 50-year-old man from the village of Yantra, who received a massive heart attack, was rescued by the on-duty doctors at the Emergency Department in Gorna Oryahovitsa and the medical teams of Cardiology Hospital Veliko Turnovo.
Watch the full report here (available in Bulgarian).
Vascular surgeons at the Heart and Brain Hospital and a team from the Clinic of Oncology Surgery at UMBAL Dr. G. Stranski Pleven performed an innovative operation to prevent lymphoedema in a patient with breast cancer. One of the common consequence of treatment in patients with breast cancer is lymphoedema of the hand, which is lymphatic edema of the limb. According to literature data, after lymph node dissection and subsequent radiation and chemotherapy, the incidence of lymphoedema reaches over 50% of cases.
Lymphoedema can sometimes lead to a significant deterioration in the quality of life in these patients, making treatment extremely difficult and complex. An innovative operation, representing an anastomosis (connection) between a lymphatic vessel from the arm and a branch of the axillary vein, is being implemented recently worldwide, with initial results in the literature indicating that such surgery reduces the incidence of lymphedema below 5%.
The operation has its own particularities. At the beginning of the procedure, a dye is injected into the subcutis of the arm, staining the lymphatic vessels of the upper limb. After removal of the lymph nodes from the axilla, using a biomicroscope, they connect to the venous vessels of the axillary vein. The whole procedure costs extra operative time but does not carry any risk of complications for the patient. The operation was successfully completed for the first time in Pleven. The patient was hospitalized with no postoperative complications and there is currently no evidence of lymphedema.
Prof. Vladimir Danov and Assoc. Prof. Nikolay Dimitrov showed the students the latest innovation in cardiac surgery, minimally invasive surgery methods such as endovascular prosthetics and transcatheter mitral valve replacement.
The original article is available here in Bulgarian.
The Cardiac Surgery Clinic at the Heart and Brain Center of Excellence in Pleven, led by Prof. h.c. Dr. Vladimir Danov, MD, PhD, took part in the jubilee scientific conference held on the occasion of the 45th anniversary of the Medical University – Pleven.
The four reports are of high scientific value and support the strategy for a long-term follow-up of patients receiving treatment at the Heart and Brain Hospital, as well as the inclusion of new patients in long-term programs for access to advanced treatment.
