The endovascular repair by Mark Farber, M.D., and Thomas Caranasos, M.D., was life-saving for the patient. This type of repair has only been performed a few times in the United States.
April 6, 2017
Mark Farber, M.D, and Thomas Caranasos, M.D., recently joined efforts for an endovascular repair of an aortic arch aneurysm involving the great vessels. This minimally invasive repair was performed as part of a physician-sponsored clinical trial spearheaded by Dr. Farber. The patient was not a surgical candidate for an open repair and would have most likely succumbed to his disease without this intervention.
This type of repair has been performed only a handful of times in the United States, at a few nationally-recognized aortic centers. The procedure, on March 17, 2017, was done with the help of UNC’s aortic research team, advanced practitioners, nurses, surgical team and residents, all working collaboratively in the new state-of-the-art Vascular Interventional Radioliogy hybrid suite at UNC Hospitals. Their effort is an example of the advanced aortic care at UNC that just a few years ago was felt to be impossible.
Dr. Farber is a professor of surgery in the UNC Division of Vascular Surgery; Dr. Caranasos is assistant professor of surgery in the UNC Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery and is director of Adult Cardiac Surgery at UNC. The clinical trial that Dr. Farber is leading (a Physician-Sponsored Investigational Device Exemption (PS-IDE) trial) is one of about five research programs of its kind in the United States. This program is dedicated to investigating new endovascular devices to improve the outcomes of patients with aortic problems. UNC is recognized as having some of the best outcomes in the country for treating patients with aortic disease.