{"id":163952,"date":"2020-08-31T10:10:28","date_gmt":"2020-08-31T14:10:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?post_type=school-college-post&p=163952"},"modified":"2020-09-03T16:04:06","modified_gmt":"2020-09-03T20:04:06","slug":"interventional-cardiologist-curbing-chronic-leg-swelling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2020\/08\/interventional-cardiologist-curbing-chronic-leg-swelling\/","title":{"rendered":"Interventional Cardiologist Curbing Chronic Leg Swelling"},"content":{"rendered":"

Meet Doreen Smith, 83, of Glastonbury. Thanks to an interventional cardiologist at UConn Health she\u2019s walking comfortably again and looking forward to her 84th<\/sup> birthday.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Doreen Smith, 83, of Glastonbury, is a grateful patient of UConn Health Calhoun Cardiology Center’s Dr. JuYong Lee who helped finally curb her chronic leg swelling. Smith is pictured here with her late son Arthur W. Smith (Photo Courtesy of Smith Family).<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cMy mom\u2019s in her eighties and Dr. JuYong Lee<\/a> saved her life,\u201d shared Princess, Smith\u2019s daughter. \u201cTo me he\u2019s a lifesaver.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smith survived a heart attack in 2008. Shortly after being treated with a double-bypass surgery at a local hospital she started experiencing excessive and chronic leg swelling that just wouldn\u2019t go away. For years doctors prescribed her diuretics and other new medications but none worked.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy mom\u2019s leg was always really swollen and looked horrifically concerning,\u201d said Princess. \u201cThe blood in her leg was not circulating and it even led to the skin on her toes busting open and becoming infected at times.\u201d<\/p>\n

After becoming her mother\u2019s dedicated caregiver Princess turned to UConn Health finally to find the answers and solutions her mom needed. \u201cMy mom has always taken care of me,\u201d shared Princess. \u201cIt\u2019s time for me to take care of her.\u201d\u00a0 Smith is cared for by Dr. Lavern Wright<\/a> at the UConn Center on Aging, who referred her to UConn Health\u2019s Pat and Jim Calhoun Cardiology Center.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWe met Dr. Lee and he knew right away that my mother needed to have stents in her leg to open up her severe vein blockages,\u201d said Princess.<\/p>\n

September is Peripheral Artery Disease (PAD) Awareness Month. But PAD, artery blockages in the body\u2019s extremities usually the legs, is just one condition in the family of conditions known as peripheral vascular disease\u00a0(PVD). PVD impact the blood\u2019s circulation inside blood vessels whether in the arteries or the veins of the body which can become narrowed or blocked.\u00a0 Blood vessel narrowing or blockages, most commonly in the legs, can often lead to pain or trouble walking.<\/p>\n

\u201cPVD diagnosis is sometimes very critical and medication may not always help,\u201d says Lee, associate professor of medicine and director of vascular medicine and endovascular therapy and the noninvasive vascular laboratory.<\/p>\n

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For years prior to Dr. JuYong Lee’s\u00a0 proper PVD diagnosis and interventional care, Doreen Smith experienced chronic left leg swelling (Photo Courtesy of Smith Family).<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Chronic leg swelling caused by PVD in the veins is because of the weakening of the body\u2019s venous circulatory system. Normally, in leg veins blood flows against gravity up from the foot through the leg and back up to the heart. A strong, healthy heart muscle\u2019s working keeps the body\u2019s blood continuing to circulate while healthy veins have valves that help keep blood flowing in the right direction. But if the heart muscle becomes weakened or vein valves become weak or leak, or veins are blocked, \u00a0blood can begin to pool inside the leg causing swelling and leading to skin changes such as the breakdown of the skin and fluid discharge.<\/p>\n

For severe vein cases of PVD such as Smith\u2019s the increased blood pressure through the veins in the leg can lead to pain in the leg or foot while at rest, or ulcer wounds. The risk factors for chronic venous hypertension are a family history or genetic predisposition, obesity, history of varicose veins or deep vein thrombosis (DVT).<\/p>\n

After finally being diagnosed with venous PVD by Lee, Smith underwent a successful minimally invasive procedure in the cardiac catheterization laboratory in the Calhoun Cardiology Center to deploy iliac vein stents in her left leg to open up her severe vein blockages and restore proper blood flow in her left leg.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy mom should have had stents a long time ago,\u201d said Princess. \u201cHer left leg swelling went away and she\u2019s able to walk again. My mom\u2019s very happy about that. It\u2019s a big improvement.\u201d<\/p>\n

Princess stresses: \u201cDr. Lee is amazing. But he also is so compassionate \u2013 and we appreciate that in a doctor!\u201d<\/p>\n

The Smith family credits Lee with saving their mother\u2019s life more than once.<\/p>\n

\u201cDr. Lee actually saved my mom\u2019s life twice,\u201d says Princess. \u201cI took my mom to the ED seven times. No one could tell us what was making her so ill. I finally called Dr. Lee and he said bring her to me. It turned out she needed her gallbladder removed!\u201d<\/p>\n

Princess adds: \u201cWe are so thankful for Dr. Lee.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI encounter many patients suffering from chronic leg swelling who have visited so many doctors with no answers,\u201d says Lee. \u201cI am so happy to finally offer a solution to my PVD patients and significantly improve their daily quality of life by having less leg swelling and skin changes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lee says for its PVD patients, the Calhoun Cardiology Center has developed a new diagnostic algorithm to pinpoint the underlying cause of each patient\u2019s chronic leg swelling with a systematic diagnostic approach.<\/p>\n

According to Lee the Calhoun Cardiology Center\u2019s initial patient data is showing that some of the chronic leg swelling patients have undiagnosed pulmonary hypertension, congestive heart failure, non-thrombotic iliac vein compression syndromes, venous insufficiency diseases or a combination of these diseases. \u00a0Correct diagnosis of these conditions are critical to improve the patient\u2019s symptoms depending on the etiology. This systematic diagnostic approach includes\u00a0 invasive or noninvasive diagnostic tests such as echocardiography, venous vascular ultrasound, right heart catheterization, and intravascular vascular ultrasound.<\/p>\n

In fact, Calhoun Cardiology Center has a combined Echo\/Vascular Lab for the patient\u2019s convenience to undergo some of these tests in one place. Dedicated, experienced vascular ultrasound technologist Henry Chua performs special venous vascular ultrasounds to detect complex venous obstruction or insufficiency with high sensitivity. Patients are then referred to the appropriate specialists after correct diagnosis for care of the underlying causes of pulmonary hypertension or chronic heart failure. Others may receive comprehensive vascular care with minimally invasive or noninvasive therapies in the high-tech cardiac catheterization laboratory with intravascular ultrasound guided imaging for venous stenting, other catheter-based therapy, or venous ablation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

September is Peripheral Artery Disease (PAD) Awareness Month. Thanks to an interventional cardiologist at UConn Health Doreen Smith, 83, of Glastonbury is now walking comfortably again and looking forward to her 84th birthday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":163989,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1868],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1873],"class_list":["post-163952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meds"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-07 03:57:27","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163952"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163952\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":163987,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163952\/revisions\/163987"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/163989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163952"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=163952"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=163952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}