Santa Cruz de Tenerife, February 15, 2021. Hospiten commemorates the 40th anniversary of the first peripheral angioplasty performed in Spain, in which one of the most prestigious specialists in the health group, Dr. Manuel Maynar, Head of the Endoluminal / Endovascular Diagnosis and Therapeutics Service since 1999, participated.
This minimally invasive technique uses a balloon to dilate the blood vessels to unblock and improve blood flow. Through medical imaging, the specialist guides a catheter to the affected area.
Angioplasty is considered the first treatment option in the event of an obstruction and the benefits of the technique range from rapid recovery to the fact that the treatment can repeated if necessary since the procedure involves the minimum possible invasion.
The first patient undergo the technique in Spain was a 46-year-old man with disabling grade II left claudication.
The introduction of the technique in our country has a reference in Professor Solsona, of the Department of Radiology in Zaragoza, where Dr. Maynar, a first-year resident with a vocation for pediatrics, initially asked for the opportunity to learn the new technique that a team of doctors had introduced in Spain.
From this first contact, Dr. Maynar requested to continue his radiological training focusing exclusively on percutaneous vascular intervention, leaving pediatrics aside, and having completed his rotation with the inventor of the technique, Dr. Andreas Grunztig, at the Cantonal Hospital of Zurich, he was chosen for his ample preparation in percutaneous vascular techniques, thanks to his training as a resident under Dr. Rius and his subsequent experience as head of the Interventional Angio-vascular Unit.
40 years after he started in the field, Prof. Maynar considers that "the most important thing for us to go on enjoying the benefits of innovation in the development of new techniques is the continued education and training of professionals and a commitment to new technologies".
Throughout his career, Prof. Maynar, in addition to being one of the pioneers in introducing the technique in Spain, has also been involved in other medical milestones, like his participation in the first live broadcast of a surgical intervention in the world in 1988. Other techniques in which he innovated were the first TIPS (transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt) , the first endovascular treatment of abdominal aortic aneurysm with endograft, among other diagnostic and therapeutic techniques.
Forty years later, the medical team that worked on the procedure maintains their personal and professional relationship and angioplasty is considered the first option for stenosis/obstruction, not just vascular.