Edouard Aboian, MD, is a vascular surgeon who specializes in aortic and limb preservation procedures, offering endovascular and open surgical solutions—sometimes a combination of the two—as well as medical therapies depending on the patient’s needs.
“I try to work not just with the patient, but with the entire family to put them at ease in what can be a difficult situation,” he says. “In many cases, I want them to understand that they have something that is treatable. We deal with these things every day, and we often can improve or completely reverse the problem that they have. It can be fixed.”
In many cases, treatment for aneurysms and other vascular problems has become easier with minimally invasive endovascular approaches, which involve working through small incisions in the groin or sometimes the arm, Dr. Aboian says. “Inside the body there is big work done, but outside, you only see little incisions.” Endovascular techniques often allow patients to recover quickly and even go home the next day after an aortic aneurysm repair, although some stay longer if the operation was complex, he says.
Dr. Aboian has been involved in research and quality improvement in vascular surgery on a national level. “This gives us granular data to analyze our work and see what we are doing well and what we can improve,” he says.
But he says the best part of his work is always making a patient better. “Years after treatment, a patient will come back for a follow-up appointment or send me a card, and say, ‘Thank you very much. Because of you, I'm alive today.’ This is the most rewarding thing,” he says.
