Your Follow-Up Appointments
Your surgeon strongly recommends that you make a commitment to lifelong follow-up of your stent graft. Your graft should be checked regularly every 6 to 12 months
All follow-up is done by your family doctor and/or your surgeon. We will try to give you a schedule of all your follow-up appointments (or mail it to you) right after your discharge or clinic visit. If you do not know your next appointment, please call your surgeon's office.
To make or change appointments,
call your surgeon's office.
If you live far away, your family doctor may do all your follow-up visits. In that case, please ensure that your family doctor sends all your consultation notes to your surgeon. Typically, you will have your follow-up appointments 6 weeks after your operation and then every 6 to 12 months for the rest of your life.
It is very important that you have regular follow-up scans to check for endoleak and changes in your aortic aneurysm.
Endoleak refers to blood flowing into the aneurysm sac around the outside of the stent graft. This could be blood from branch arteries, the attachments sites or other places in the aneurysm sac.
Endoleak occurs in 10 to 30% of EVAR surgeries. They occur more often in the first few years after the operation but can occur at any time. There are no symptoms for endoleak so you won't know if or when it develops. It can be found and evaluated by ultrasound and/or CT and MRI scans.
When the endoleak is minimal, it doesn't usually need any treatment, just monitoring. If the endoleak results in further aneurysm growth, there are different treatments available. Your surgeon will talk to you about this.
