Endovascular Skills: Guidewire and Catheter Skills for Endovascular Surgery PDF

Preface

Endovascular Skills is meant to provide a "step-by-step" approach to techniques and procedures that comprise one of the most exciting and rapidly developing specialties in medicine today: minimally invasive management of vascular disease. Endovascular technique has gone from a novelty to a mainstay of vascular care and the Third Edition of Endovascular Skills has been revised and expanded to reflect these changes. This book serves as a "how-to" guide for endovascular intervention and aims to assist clinicians in the development and refinement of skills that are now essential to modern vascular practice.

Since Endovascular Skills was first compiled in the mid-1990's, endovascular intervention has gone through a tremendous phase of development. Significant advances have been made in re-opening and re-lining vessels in every vascular bed. More extensive patterns of vascular disease are being treated, many of which would have required open surgery in the past. The endovascular approach has become more broadly accepted by patients, medical professionals, scientists, engineers, and the public at large. The technical skills and the device innovations that make endovascular practice possible have advanced and developed over the past few years, providing new treatment options that are safer and better tolerated. These skills and devices will likely continue development for the foreseeable future. Simultaneous growth in the public health challenge of an enlarging patient population at risk for vascular disease will likely prompt wider adoption and new applications.

The skills to perform endovascular techniques are based on several principles that are outlined in Endovascular Skills. The book begins with strategy, vascular access, guidewire–catheter handling, and arteriography in a multitude of vascular beds (Part I). The knowledge base builds as the text progresses in much the same manner that the skill of the professional builds as experience is gained by performing more complex cases and managing complicated patterns of disease. Part II of the book is devoted to endovascular therapy, including; sheath access, balloon angioplasty, stents, and other treatment modalities. These sections are the same as previous editions in concept but they have been thoroughly revised to incorporate the most contemporary practices. In the same manner that endovascular has matured as a field, an entirely new major section has been added to the Third Edition which covers Advanced Endovascular Skills. Part III focuses on more recently developed imaging and endovascular treatment techniques, including; use of 0.014 guidewires and monorail platforms for noncoronary arteries, cryoplasty, atherectomy, stent-grafting, subintimal angioplasty, carotid bifurcation stenting, and many others.

The possession of endovascular skills by clinicians dedicated to the management of vascular disease is one of the keys to advancing patient care in this area. The Third Edition of Endovascular Skills is meant to assist in that challenging and rewarding endeavor.

New illustrations and updated drawings by Meadow Green.