The Vascular and Interventional Centre is a clinic in Singapore that offers comprehensive and effective vascular treatments for patients. The centre performs endovascular procedures for vascular diseases. Typically, a vascular surgeon, a neuro-interventionist, an interventional radiologist, an endovascular surgeon, or simply a vascular specialist under a different name runs such centres. Through the years, the centre has grown to its current size, fully equipped with all necessary facilities and support to perform such interventions. At most, what a patient needs is an area of the blood vessel to be detected, perhaps with the help of an imaging study such as the CTA, MRA, or angiography, and these vascular specialists in the centre will do the rest. Vascular and Interventional Centre (VIC) is no longer the new kid on the block. To date, VIC is a one-stop fully equipped endovascular centre offering all forms of vascular image-guided procedures.
Overview of Vascular Conditions and Treatments
Overall, most of these diseases require management by vascular surgeons and intervention by an interventional radiologist. Combining our specialized services, featuring dedicated vascular specialists and state-of-the-art equipment, the center offers holistic and individualized treatment for every vascular patient. This makes the new center a worthy one-stop location for patients with the above-mentioned conditions.
Vascular diseases are conditions that affect your arteries and veins, including hardening of the arteries and peripheral artery disease (PAD). Specifically affecting the arteries, CTOs develop when artery blockages are complete. Related diseases include critical limb ischemia (CLI), which is characterized by severe leg pain that does not subside even at rest, peripheral arterial disease (PAD), and deep vein thrombosis (DVT). Interventional oncology uses minimally invasive techniques to treat cancers and includes chemoembolization, embolotherapy, and microwave ablation. Endovascular surgery is a less invasive procedure compared to traditional open surgery and is commonly referred to as “pinhole surgery.” Vascular medicine and surgery is a broad specialty with a focus on managing diseases and conditions related to the body’s blood vessels. Some of the more common ones we treat include:
Key Techniques and Innovations
Historically, it was necessary to make a large skin incision in the groin to allow access to a patient’s bloodstream in order to correct a problem with a blood vessel. From this groin incision, it was then possible to access your aorta or your carotid artery with a catheter to correct whatever underlying problem you have, for example, blockage or fraying in the walls of these arteries. Over the years, it became more common to access blood vessels in the various parts of your body percutaneously, i.e. by using a syringe-type needle to poke through the tissue planes all the way down to the level of your blood vessels. Thereafter, a wire could be introduced through the needle into your blood vessel and dilatation balloons or stents could be delivered over the wire. This is essentially a ‘keyhole’ operation. However, like all keyhole operations, sometimes it can be quite difficult to navigate all the way down to the blood vessels in question with just the needle and a wire. For example, getting from outside your body all the way to the carotid artery in your neck or to the aorta in your tummy can indeed be very tricky because you have to navigate around lots of vital body parts such as bones and organs.
Endovascular technology has allowed vascular interventional radiologists to treat patients with minimally invasive techniques for a wide variety of conditions, and this technology is advancing at an amazing pace. This has allowed patients who are not appropriate surgical candidates to still receive very effective and life-saving treatments for their underlying medical problems. Vascular interventional radiologists specializing in endovascular procedures perform anything from a straightforward angioplasty to complex procedures such as endovascular stent grafts for abdominal aortic aneurysm or thoracic aneurysm repair.
Expertise of the Best Vascular Surgeons
Vascular surgeons are experts at creating bypasses, while also being familiar with all the latest minimally invasive—otherwise known as endovascular—procedures, such as angioplasty (using balloons) and stents to open up blocked or narrowed arteries. The fact that the Vascular and Interventional Centre, as a facility, is able to provide both vascular surgery and endovascular treatment is quite unique in Singapore. With the increasing number of vascular patients and the increasing complexity of modern surgery, it is important to have access to both surgical and endovascular options, whereby the surgeon can tailor the procedure to the individual patient based on the disease characteristics. Only a center whose staff were expert in all forms of vascular treatment can offer this facility, be it elective or emergency, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Vascular surgeons are specialists who are able to apply a variety of techniques to diseased blood vessels, including the latest endovascular treatment, which involves repairing damaged blood vessels from within. These surgeons are not to be confused with cardiologists or cardiothoracic surgeons, who are not usually involved in repairing blood vessels. Usually, when someone is referred to as a vascular surgeon, what is meant is a consultant who specializes in repairing blood vessels that take blood away from the heart to the rest of the body, including arteries that supply blood to the legs and feet, the arteries in the neck, and those that deliver blood to the abdomen and kidneys.
Specialized Care for Vascular Malformations
A vascular malformation may appear anywhere in the body, but this can definitely be treated using our vascular surgeon’s methods. At VIC, all management strategies are already pursued independently. The difficulties of combining therapeutic modalities in a single operation and the relative paucity of all these other treatment modalities make VIC an exceptionally suitable place to acquire state-of-the-art procedures and judgment in the most advanced forms of minimally-invasive procedures. A specialized interest area for the Vascular and Interventional Centre (VIC) is the management of congenital and acquired vascular malformations. Vascular malformations are sub-classified into arterio-venous malformations, venous malformations, lymphatic malformations, and capillary malformations. Some authors will also describe complex combined malformations. These malformations can cause severe pain, deformity, and even death, and their management is often complex. The treatment of vascular malformations involves a multidisciplinary approach and may require radiologic therapies or a combination of surgery and radiologic intervention. In some cases, embolization precedes surgery in order to reduce the amount of blood loss experienced during surgery, and in others embolization is used to prevent additional bleeding. In other cases, there may be significant medical contraindications to surgery and the appropriate form of treatment may be only radiologic.
Understanding Vascular Malformations
Vascular malformations are a group of rare defects, often consisting of tangles of blood vessels including veins, arteries, and capillaries. The vast prevalence of these malformations is sporadic and are not inherited. This means that they are not passed down from one generation to the next within the same family. However, they appear to develop and grow as a child develops and grows. They are often at least partly present at birth but might not be detected until later in life – especially when they cause pain, disfigurement, or certain other typical symptoms. Over time, these malformations can lead to other health issues such as heart failure if the malformation allows too much blood to run through it or causes a very high amount of blood flow. The malformations can also cause decreased function.
In the VIC, this patient-centered approach was not only physical but mainly in resolution of the unique patient problem. Success stories in endovascular intervention, from any approach but a creation from a multidisciplinary cardiovascular center, and emerged from probability for success whenever all aspects of endovascular intervention were resolved before the procedures. These success stories should serve as examples leading to team creation not only through the results but also to caring patients and developing evidence-based diagnostics, technical approaches, and teaching-in-training development. The best vascular surgeon in Singapore can be found at VIC,
The development of VIC from a historical perspective drives the intent and purpose to a progressively organized facility, blending teamwork in caring for patient needs in practical orientation of all aspects of evidence-based technology, with an economic view. The patient-centered approach was by personal communication in rounds with cardiology, surgery, radiology, emergency, and ambulatory settings. As some people might argue that this patient-centered approach could be mastered without the physical setting, one could notice that recent tendencies in medical centers aim to a collaborative team to focus on health care delivery.