Peripheral vascular disease.

Abstract

There is little doubt that one of the greatest advances in the field of peripheral arterial disease was our ability to visualize problems wherever they occurred. This was possible because of the development of arteriography. One of the dramatic developments that made this possible was the observation by Forsmann1 in 1929 that a catheter could be threaded through a peripheral vein into the right heart. He also suggested the possibility of injecting a contrast agent through the catheter for imaging purposes. Because of this contribution, he was awarded the Nobel prize in 1953. Seldinger2 in 1953 pushed this concept even further by showing that it was possible to replace an intra-arterial needle with a catheter that could be manipulated within the arterial system. These developments, along with the realization that arteries could be replaced, led to many of the early advances. One of the first methods used to replace segments of abdominal aorta was the use of homografts. Dubost et al3 in 1952 reported the replacement of an aortic aneurysm with a homograft. This procedure was rapidly followed by similar efforts in the United States by Julian et al4 and Debakey et al.5 These homografts were initially used for the treatment of abdominal aortic aneurysms but did have serious problems related to size, according to the anatomy of the patient and late breakdown of the grafts themselves.6 Once it became obvious that arterial homografts were not an answer to the problem of arterial replacement, development of alternative methods moved ahead rapidly. Vorhees et al7 in 1952 reported the first application of an artificial prosthetic device for arterial replacement. This led to the development of other prosthetic materials such as Dacron, Teflon, and polytetrafluoroethylene.8 These grafts were and still are in widespread use …