Successful Robot-Assisted Pulmonary Artery Stenting of High-Grade Anastomotic Artery Stenosis Following Single Lung Transplantation

Abstract

as requested by the rheumatology service at our institution. All procedures were performed under local anesthesia and sedation, with no major complications. We evaluated the patient demographics, biopsy results, and characteristics of the biopsy specimen.Results: In this period, we performed 33 temporal artery biopsies in 27 patients (23 women, 85%; 4 men, 5%) who were a mean age of 73.1 years. Results of 29 biopsy specimens were negative (88%), 3 were positive (9%), and 1 was inconclusive (3%). Visual disturbance with headache was present in all patients in our series, with a mean sed rate of 61. There were 5 bilateral temporal artery biopsies (30.3%), 12 left-sided biopsies (36.3%), and 11 right-sided biopsies (33.3%); biopsies were performed in the symptomatic side. The mean length of the biopsied artery was 2.6 cm. The performance of a temporal artery biopsy offers a negative predictive value of 96% (CI, 0.80-0.99).Conclusions: The vascular surgeon should be aware that the performance of temporal artery biopsy has limited impact on the diagnosis of giant-cell arteritis, and is only one of the five criteria for diagnosis. The performance of a biopsy should be limited to patients who have a contraindication to treatment with steroids.