Doctors Vacuum A 2-Foot-Long Clot Out Of Man's Leg
Historical Illustration of the Muscle and Circulatory Systems From Bartholomeo Eustachi's color plates, first published in 1564. Hosted online by the National Library of Medicine. The human body is so weird. So we don't know how 62-year-old Todd Dunlap is feeling right now. We just can't imagine. Last month, doctors vacuumed a two-foot-long clot out of his leg veins-a first for the state of California, according to UCLA, where Dunlap was treated. Dunlap's doctors used a device, called AngioVac, that pulls blood out of veins and removes problematic materials, such as clots and tumors, according to a description from Angiodynamics, AngioVac's maker. The device then returns the cleaned blood to the body. This is the first time California doctors have ever suctioned a clot out of someone's veins. A quick literature search found individual cases of doctors using this technique in New York, Pennsylvania and Germany; in general, it seems very new. A...