According to Dr. Ibrahim Moussa, an interventional cardiologist at Virtua Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Camden, clots are often broken up with blood thinners, but that takes time and requires a longer hospitalization.
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Instead, Moussa and other South Jersey doctors are now removing the clots with a relatively new tool that provides patients with immediate relief.
“Based on the location of that clot, we go in with a catheter, then we put negative aspiration or suction on it, and that elongates the clot,” Moussa said. “We're able to extract it effectively out of the lungs and out of the body.”
The device, called FlowTriever, is the first FDA-approved device of its kind designed to treat blood clots in the lungs.
Blood clots can be painful and potentially deadly, Moussa emphasized.
“It plugs up the circulation and when the circulation is plugged up, there's no forward flow of blood, and it's catastrophic,” he said. “The patient can present with onset shortness of breath, a sense of doom, feeling faint, or sometimes cardiac arrest and death.”