At the beginning of March, the Northern Health vascular surgery team welcomed a world-class vascular surgeon for a complex vascular workshop at Northern Hospital.

Mr Shrikkanth Rangarajan, Northern Health Vascular Surgeon, said, “We had a workshop focusing on complex aortic pathology and repair of aneurysms in the aorta, and had Professor Eichler from San Francisco visit us, who was proctoring the two cases in the workshop.”

Following the first case at the workshop, Mr Rangarajan, said, “the first case was challenging, as we expected, and we’re hopeful that the patient will have a good outcome.”

Professor Eichler said the two cases were both very complicated aortic cases and he was impressed with the team and the facilities at Northern Health.

“I think it is impressive – they have a really good team here and they work well together. This is a great operating suite they have here and so they certainly have the ability to take on these challenges and get a good outcome,” he said.

Mr Rangarajan said, “these are certainly not run of the mill cases, they do present infrequently. The anatomy and the patients are challenging because they’re not fit for some techniques or major open surgery, so we’re utilising more complex endovascular techniques.”

“So there is certainly that capability that we’re developing to do the best for the patients and be able to offer every form of treatment to enable these patients to have the best treatment for them.”

“I want to thank them for inviting me – we had the opportunity to host them in San Francisco about six months ago, so it’s great to come over here and see how things are working,” Professor Eichler said.

“From a Northern Health perspective, the vascular unit here is in a growth phase and we’re very proud to be enabling patients to have input from world-class vascular surgeons,” Mr Rangarajan said.

Featured Image: Mr Shrikkanth Rangarajan (front row, left) with Professor Eichler (back row, centre) with the Northern Health vascular surgery team