This is marie-
Hi!

I am rarely here these days but sammyjo sent me a link to this thread and I thought I'd add something re:vein replacement after I read it.
VEIN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE LIVER
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1422571/In this one people with neck cancer had radical neck dissection and reconstruction of ONE internal jugular vein. Though most died of cancer, two lived on to 8 and 18 years with no "apparent neurological consequences" In other words, the one vein they recontraucted worked pretty well and the people seemed to get by with the one vein. I would argue those people should be evaluated with MRi for ventricular lesions typical of MS to see if 8 years of this has allowed one or two silent lesions to develop....but be that as it may it does point out that reconstruction of these veins is not unheard of.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... 00019/fullIn the legs they have been working on good solutions for intractable venous insufficiency for a long time...it can be devilishly hard to treat (Dr Zamboni was a venous disease specialist before Elena ever got sick, which is why he recognized her blood flow issues as possibly venous insufficiency. But it is important to note that they have never had consistently slam-dunk great results with venous problems of the legs...it remains a frustrating and difficult medical problem that is hard to heal.)
http://www.phlebolymphology.org/2009/07 ... fficiency/I recently saw an ad showing synthetic vein used to replace a bad saphenous vein in a patient with venous ulcer--his ulcer healed up with the synthetic vein was placed and 9 months went by. Goretex has been used for a long time as a vein replacement material but with mixed results as far as staying patent
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/4049199this paper suggests real veins are better than synthetics for staying power
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19125710I hope they develop better and better techniques.