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Patient to Doctor During Surgery: “Are You Done Yet?”

75-year-old Bruce Varner of Hunlock Creek says he remembers everything about the night last October he woke up at 2am with severe pain in his back and stomach. ...

75-year-old Bruce Varner of Hunlock Creek says he remembers everything about the night last October he woke up at 2am with severe pain in his back and stomach.

"The paramedic that got on board knew exactly what was happening.  So he called ahead to have Mariner meet him at the hospital.  If he hadn't done that, I'd have died," Varner says.

"Mariner" is Dr. David Mariner, a vascular surgeon at Geisinger Wyoming Valley Medical Center near Wilkes-Barre.  And what was happening was the rupture of an abdominal aortic aneurysm.  One look at Varner's scan that night tells the tale: those are his kidneys, and that bulge you see is the aneurysm that had burst.

"In a rupture situation, you may have a 20% chance of survival. Maybe," Dr. Mariner tell us.  He says Varner was in shock and his blood pressure very low by the time he got to the hospital.  Dr. Mariner knew he needed to put in a stent to stop the bleeding, but he says general anesthesia was too big of a risk.  So he did the nearly two-hour operation while Varner was awake.

"With local anesthesia, we made a couple of incisions and threaded this stent graft up," Dr. Mariner recalls.  "Here I am repairing a ruptured aneurysm and I never had a patient say, 'how much longer will it take?'"

"When I was getting operated on I kept asking, are we done yet? Are you done yet?" Varner says.

They both smile at the memory now.  For Varner and his wife of more than 50 years, the surgery's success has been a chance to enjoy each other and their family.  He'll need close follow-up from now on, but says he feels good and has recovered quickly.

For Dr. Mariner, the case is a reminder of how far technology has come, and an opportunity to point out it's important to talk to your doctor about screening for an abdominal aneurysm before it gets the chance to rupture.

"You know, somebody has back pain in a disc and incidentally they find an abdominal aneurysm," he explains.

In Bruce Varner's case, Dr. Mariner estimates that the aneurysm might have been there for 10 or more years.  Men are more susceptible than women, and if you are a smoker, more than 60-years old, and/or have a family history of abdominal aneurysm it's especially important to be checked out.  Check with your own doctor about whether you're at a high risk.

 

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