‘Game-changing,’ rapid blood clot removal procedure now standard at 3 Edmonton hospitals

A new and less invasive blood clot removal procedure introduced earlier this year is now in use at three Edmonton hospitals.

A new, minimally invasive procedure to remove blood clots introduced earlier this year has become the standard at three Edmonton hospitals.

It uses continuous X-ray imaging to help feed a catheter through a vein and the heart to the lungs, where clots are then removed. Patients are usually under mild sedation during the procedure, which lasts one to two hours.

Doctors first used the procedure in March at the Royal Alexandra Hospital and the University of Alberta Hospital in a pilot project.

The procedure is now standard at the two hospitals as well as at Edmonton’s Stollery Children’s Hospital and at Calgary’s Foothills Medical Centre.

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David Batke had back surgery at the end of last year. He was recovering from it at home when, a month later, he was getting out of bed and standing up when he passed out and was taken to the Royal Alex. Doctors there determined the 59-year-old had developed a pulmonary embolism, which is a blood clot that has travelled to a lung and blocks an artery.

Since Batke wasn’t able to take medication to deal with the clots, he was given the choice of open heart surgery or the new procedure. He chose the latter.

“They got me into this procedure in a few hours, and within a couple of hours, they were done the procedure,” Batke said, recalling the experience on Tuesday at the Royal Alex, where Alberta Health Services promoted the new procedure for media.

“I was awake for the whole thing – I heard everything and experienced it all – and within hours after I was done the procedure, I was way better within four to six hours. I was in the ICU (intensive care unit) then, and I was laughing and joking with the nurse.”

Batke said he was then released from intensive care to a regular bed in the hospital and was discharged two days later with no symptoms. The business owner who employs 28 people said if he had gone the open heart surgery route, he might have been off work for months. The new procedure, he says, “is a game-changer.”

“I was 100-per-cent back to normal within a week,” Batke said now nine months later. “I was back to work and back to regular life.”

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Evan Klippenstein