aortic endografts

[smarkley]

I was just curious-in your facility do cardiologists place endografts or surgeons? Do they collaborate? Are they done in the cath lab or the OR? I work for a surgeon who collaborates frequently with a cardiologist in the OR. The surgeon also performs them himself. I was at the annual Society for Vascular Nurses meeting this past week and one of the discussions made me think of these questions. Any input would be very helpful.

[hollyster]

In our facility they are done in the OR by a vascular surgeon(not cardio-thoracic) and an interventional radilogist. We do them in the OR instead of IR in case the pt ruptures it would take only seconds to change it to an open case, since all the surgical supplies are in place.

[smarkley]

Thanks for the reply, that's what I was thinking but there were nurses at the conference that made it sound like some were being done in IR or the cath lab and that was a very scary thought!

[hollyster]

Thanks for the reply, that's what I was thinking but there were nurses at the conference that made it sound like some were being done in IR or the cath lab and that was a very scary thought!

That would be very scary. When we first started talking about doing endografts we knew the only place (in case of ruputure or tear) they would have a chance of survivial was in an fully open OR suite.

[Marie_LPN, RN, LPN, RN]

Ours are done in the O.R. by the vascular surgeons as well.