What to expect when having an angiogram and possible stent put in?

Question

ok im 16 and i have had like 50 other surgeries literally(i have lots of health problems from my sturge-weber) and i would like to know what this suregery is going to be like , how long the recovery is.....my doc said i have to stay over night in the hospital...maybe i should explain my situation first....well my doctor wanted to know why i have highblood pressure since they never really found out from what when i was a baby they just assumed that my birthmark(sturge-weber) covered my kidneys and that was why i had the high blood pressure so he decided to do bloodtesting and a MRA for it and found that one of my kidneys was waaaay smaller than the other(i even seen it) and that both the arteries going into each of my kidneys had something wrong with them (one was all blocked up and big and the other was really small) so he said i was going to have an angiogram under local anasthetic(srry cant spell lol) and a possible and more than like likely a stent or stint put in.is this gona hurt?

he said that if i dont do this now that my kidneys would completely fail(because basically they are failing now)
Also....do u think its possible to still be in a dance for something at school or will i not be able to practice that week or at all for a while?

Answer 1

an angiogram is when a catheter is placed into a blood vessel to inject a radioopaque dye so that the blood vessel may be seen on xray. when a patient has an angiogram, he or she is given some medicine for sedation (for relaxation and pain control). once the patient is sleepy, a bladder catheter (Foley) is placed so the patient's urine output can be monitored closely. after that the doctor places a needle through your skin into an artery in your groin which allows him or her to direct a guidewire into your aorta (the body's main artery) and advance it into the blood vessel that needs to be studied. at that point, the doctor can inject dye into the blood vessel of interest and if there is a narrowing of the blood vessel, he or show can do a couple of things. one thing is called angioplasty. this is when a balloon is expanded in the artery to open it up. another thing which is done after angioplasty is placing a stent. a stent is a wire mesh in the shape of the blood vessel which helps keep it open. after the angiogram/angioplasty/stent, the patient is taken to a recovery room (much like after surgery). if the catheter in your blood vessel was not removed in the room where the xrays were taken, it is removed in the recovery room. after the catheter is removed from your blood vessel, you have to lay in bed for up to six hours to prevent bleeding. since you'll be in bed for up to six hours after your angiogram, you'll still have the catheter in your bladder. after the six hours, you can usually get up and your bladder catheter can be removed. sometimes you get some bruising and bleeding from the puncture site but usually not. most of the time you'll just have a small bandage (2"x2") at the puncture site. if you have a stent placed, you'll stay overnight for monitoring (they'll check your labs the next morning and make sure you're making enough urine, etc). it is usually not too painful because the puncture site is small (less than 1cm). usually you can go back to school or work in a few days, but everyone is different so some people take longer to recover.

Answer 2

Generally, having a stent put in is not very painful. They need to make a relative small hole in an antery in your groin, through which they thread a catheter (a tube). Then they can put everything else the need through the catheter. You may feel a slight burning sensation when they inject the dye that they need to see what they're doing, but other than that and the fairly minimal discomfort caused by the groin access, you can't feel anything inside your blood vessels, so the procedure is mostly painless.
Recovery is also generally pretty fast, you'll probably have to lie still for a few hours and take it easy for a few days afterwards, but after that it should be fine. For more details, talk to the doctor who's going to perform it, he will know better exactly what he plans that I can guess from here.