Penn Medicine Doylestown Health Provides the Full Range of Vascular Care in a Community Setting

At Penn Medicine Doylestown Health’s Woodall Center for Heart and Vascular Care, fellowship-trained vascular surgeons combine tertiary-level expertise and a personalized approach to find the right treatment for each patient — all in a convenient suburban location.

Treating the Whole Patient

The vascular team at Penn Medicine Doylestown Health (PMDH) provides a full range of care to treat vascular disease, from diagnosis and early intervention to complex open, endovascular, and hybrid approaches.

“Our goal is to treat patients like our family members,” says Atul Rao, MD, FACS, of PMDH Vascular Surgery. “We don’t just treat disease process, we are treating the person.”

 

Dr. Rao and his partner, vascular surgeon Paul Foley, MD, engage with patients and referring physicians to develop a plan of care to optimize vascular health. The team’s thorough approach includes conducting initial evaluations, prioritizing early intervention, scheduling procedures or surgeries as necessary, and routinely surveilling with vascular ultrasound and other imaging for patients not requiring surgical intervention.

“We welcome inquiries from referring physicians anywhere in the process of diagnosing vascular disease, even well before the condition is reaching the threshold where intervention is required,” says Dr. Rao.

“An early referral allows us to get to know the patient, create a vascular care plan, and follow them in our surveillance regimen,” Dr. Foley adds. Another benefit to early referral is that the patient is established and familiar with the team, should a vascular intervention be required in the future.

When Surgery is Needed

The PMDH Vascular Surgery team offers the full spectrum of open, endovascular, and hybrid interventions to treat vascular disease. This includes routine and highly specialized procedures such as fenestrated endovascular aneurysm repairs, branched thoracic aortic grafts, iliac branched endovascular aneurysm repairs, transcarotid artery revascularization (TCAR), and percutaneous arterial bypass (PTAB).

“When we are evaluating a patient for the best procedure to treat their vascular disease, our recommendation will vary based on the person’s condition, anatomy, and other factors,” says Dr. Rao. “While a minimally invasive or endovascular procedure may not be best for every patient, an ever-growing number of vascular repairs are possible through tiny incisions. For instance, the majority of endovascular abdominal aortic aneurysm and thoracic aneurysm repairs at PMDH are done percutaneously as opposed to surgical cutdown,” according to Dr. Rao.

Benefits of the percutaneous approach include less scarring, quicker recovery, and decreased chance of infection. “When it comes to patient conditions that are not suitable for minimally invasive interventions, we also have vast experience performing more traditional standard and complex open surgical repairs,” he adds.

Endovascular Innovation

In January 2024, Dr. Foley was the first surgeon in Bucks County, PA, to offer PTAB, using the FDA-approved DETOUR™ System to treat severe lower extremity peripheral artery disease (PAD). This endovascular approach is designed specifically for long complex femoropopliteal disease in patients who are not candidates for traditional open bypass surgery due to age or comorbidities.

During PTAB, the surgeon deploys stent grafts to create a bypass, using the patient’s own vascular anatomy. The surgeon passes the stents through the arterial wall, into an adjacent vein, and then back to the artery to create a bypass around the blocked blood vessel.

Hybrid Operating Room Enhances Safety

The dedicated vascular hybrid operating room at Penn Doylestown Health offers flexibility and advanced imaging technology, allowing vascular surgeons to make real-time decisions and customize care for each patient. The advanced imaging capabilities also facilitate accurate anatomic evaluation, thereby enabling the performance of more complex endovascular procedures. Patients also have the potential to receive lower doses of radiation and contrast agents, enhancing safety.

“And in some instances, when entirely minimally invasive percutaneous procedures are not feasible, we are able to perform less invasive hybrid procedures—in part involving open surgical techniques and in part utilizing state-of-the-art endovascular strategies—to achieve similar results without the need for more invasive techniques,” says Dr. Rao.

Supporting Healthy Lifestyles

The team at Penn Doylestown Health encourages ongoing health education and support, family involvement, and coaching to help patients get and stay well.

Guided Exercise Therapy for Peripheral Arterial Disease (PAD)

The most effective non-invasive therapy for improving symptoms of PAD is exercise and lifestyle changes.

“Exercise can help patients develop vascular detour pathways around blockages,” says Dr. Foley, noting that studies show supervised exercise has better outcomes than home therapy.

PMDH offers a Guided Exercise Therapy Program for Peripheral Artery Disease. This supervised program is designed to help patients improve their fitness and manage PAD symptoms through exercise and education.

Smoking Cessation Success

Through participation in the CANDO Smoking Cessation program by the Society of Vascular Surgery, 50 percent of patients at PMDH remained smoke-free after three months. The program aims to improve surgical outcomes and survival rates by encouraging patients to quit smoking before surgery.

Committed to Quality

PMDH Vascular Surgery participates in the Vascular Quality Initiative (VQI), a national registry designed to improve the quality, safety, effectiveness, and cost of vascular health care. The VQI collects, analyzes, and shares data on pre-operative risk factors, intra-procedural variables, post-procedural outcomes, and one-year follow-up data.

Procedures Offered

The breath of interventions for vascular disorders managed by the Vascular Surgery team includes:

• Aortic aneurysms and other aortic pathologies: Both straightforward and complex endovascular repairs, hybrid approaches, and open surgical repairs, including EVAR/FEVAR/TEVAR
• Peripheral arterial disease: Standard angioplasty/stents, novel devices such as Shockwave lithotripsy angioplasty and DETOUR PTAB technology
• Cerebrovascular disease: Traditional carotid endarterectomies, TCAR (transcarotid artery revascularization with stent), and transfemoral stenting
• Peripheral arterial and visceral aneurysms: Traditional open surgical repairs/bypasses or minimally invasive embolization strategies and utilization of specialized stent grafts
• Chronic/acute mesenteric insufficiency: Appropriate endovascular or open surgical interventions as needed, and the use of hybrid strategies
• Hemodialysis access: Creation of permanent dialysis access, fistulagrams/minimally invasive salvage techniques, and other management strategies for unavoidable dialysis access complications
• Deep venous thromboses (DVTs): For select cases, we offer minimally invasive clot dissolution or removal techniques involving catheter-based treatments
• Renal artery stenosis: We manage select patients with renal artery stenosis related pathologies through stent placement or, less frequently, open surgical procedures

Clinical consult and patient referral

Atul Rao, MD, FACS, and Paul Foley, MD, see patients at Penn Medicine Doylestown Health’s Woodall Center for Heart and Vascular Care in Doylestown, PA. For a provider-to-provider consultation with Drs. Rao and Foley, call 877-937-7366, or refer a patient online.