Limb Salvage Through Angiogenesis: Growing New Vessels to Prevent Amputation

Narrowing or blockage in the arteries of the legs (stenosis) can lead to:

• inability to walk
• inability to heal wounds of the calf or foot
• gangrene

This condition, known as arterial insufficiency, is most commonly due to diabetes, < diabetes.html> high cholesterol, hardening of the arteries, and smoking.

Some patients with arterial insufficiency will require surgical procedures such as balloon angioplasty < balloonangioplastysurgery.html > or arterial bypass surgery < legbypasssurgery.html > to save their legs. Other patients will require amputation because the extent of the arterial blockage in their legs is so severe that surgery or balloon angioplasty won’t work.

The human body maintains the capacity to grow new blood vessels to replace blocked and narrowed ones. New blood vessel growth, also known as angiogenesis, already occurs normally in many instances in the body. However, for reasons not yet clear, the body fails to grow adequate amounts of new blood vessels to replenish blood-starved legs.

Surgeons at NYU’s Division of Peripheral Vascular Surgery focus on how to prompt the body to heal, on demand, the condition of arterial insufficiency. Research focuses on:

1. interactions of blood vessel growth factors
2. hidden messages within the molecules of blood-starved leg muscle
3. known conditions where angiogenesis occurs in the body

By inducing angiogenesis patients with limb-threatening arterial insufficiency, promoting increased blood flow in blood-starved legs without resorting to invasive procedures, surgeons can save legs that would otherwise be lost to amputation.