UK HealthCast: A less invasive surgery for aortic aneurysm

UK HealthCast is a podcast series featuring interviews with UK HealthCare experts on a variety of health-related topics.

On this edition, Dr. Sam Tyagi, surgeon with the UK Gill Heart & Vascular Institute, discusses a breakthrough device available to UK HealthCare patients.

You can listen to the podcast below, or search for “UK HealthCast” wherever you prefer listening. A summary of Dr. Tyagi’s conversation is also below.

What does a Vascular Surgeon do and what kinds of patients do you see?

Dr Tyagi: It's a common joke amongst vascular surgeons that sometimes even our mothers can't describe exactly what we do. 

Essentially, we are a specialty that treats diseases of the blood vessels, whether it's atherosclerosis or aneurysms or even trauma; all the blood vessels in the body, with the exception of those on the heart, the coronaries or those within the skull.

What is the TAMBE procedure?

Dr. Tyagi: Traditional treatment for aneurysms is through open surgery and in the abdomen and chest parts of the body, those open procedures are very large, major operations. 

Now we have the  TAMBE device, which is the first FDA-approved device for thoracoabdominal, which means chest and abdomen aneurysms. 

This  TAMBE device has been something we've been waiting for for many, many years. It had really good results in the clinical trial and is now FDA-approved. UK was in the first group to be trained in implanting this device and performed it in the first month it was available, very successfully. 

That was mid-summer, 2024. And since then, we've done 12 procedures. All have been technically very smooth and we're excited to offer this, the minimally invasive treatment for which there was no minimally invasive option before, now at UK.