A vascular surgeon is a specialist who diagnoses and treats problems with your blood vessels including the arteries (which takes blood from your heart to the feet), veins (responsible for the backflow of blood from your feet to your heart) and lymphatic vessels which drain the excess fluid from the legs and body back into the heart. Vascular surgeons consult patients both in the outpatient and in the inpatient setting and provide urgent treatment to prevent stroke, bleeding from aortic aneurysm rupture and relieve blockages in arteries to the legs and intestines. They are highly skilled specialists not only working with complex anatomy in the abdomen and legs but also treating the medical issues associated with vascular disease.
By nature a vascular surgeon is also an endovascular surgeon by training in these modern times. Endovascular surgery treats disorders of the blood vessels (arteries, veins, lymphatics), using keyhole and minimally invasive techniques to unblock occluded arteries such as in the setting of peripheral artery disease (angioplasty) and in DVT (remove clot from blocked veins in the legs) and strengthen dilated arteries from the inside (EVAR for abdominal aortic aneurysm repair). Endovascular surgery does not involve large incisions or cuts therefore it is usually considered a less major operation or procedure than open vascular surgery.
