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Show A Parade ?1fnTa8 Is Follow-u- p i: i by Lawrence Galton ENCLEWOOD, N.J. n Sunday, Aug. 7, when PARADE published an article called "New Medical Procedure: Umbilical Cords Provide Crafts for Arteries," industrial John Rosza, a a in was Connecticut worker, hospital. The toes on one foot were black; the ankle was rapidly blackening and becoming gangrenous; there were no pulses in his leg; circulation was blocked. Amputation of his leg was to be performed within 48 hours. But that day in Fairfield, Conn., his sister-in-la- w read the PARADE story and brought it to the hospital. Rosza called his surgeon and canceled the operation. Soon after, Rosza was in Englewood (N.J.) Hospital and when we talked to him there several weeks later, he was ebullient. A vein taken from an umbilical cord a vein that would otherwise have been discarded with the cord after childbirth, as is normal had been treated and implanted from his groin to below his knee to bypass the blocked artery that had led to several years of suffering. His leg was intact. The umbilical vein had saved it. The pain was gone, the gangrenous areas healing. "A miracle," Rosza called it. On that Sunday in August, Mrs. Audrey Servello of Fresno, Cal., woke to find her husband with the PARADE story in hand, urging her to read it Like Rosza, she, too, was a candidate for leg amputation. Her toes were gangrenous. One had been removed. There was no alternative, her surgeon had told her: she must lose her leg. tfriefic rranci rarrra j ivh his exuberant family: daughter Laudine Creighton , son Ron and wife Laura. UfUlftCU We visited her in Englewood Hospital three days after an umbilical vein byThere was pass from groin to mid-le- g. her in the color was warmth now foot, circulation were the back, good, pulses was restored, and she was eager to be out of bed. "An answer to prayers," she said. "I had been left without hope." Since the article appeared, the Englewood Hospital vascular surgeons who developed the umbilical vein graft procedure Drs. Herbert and Irving Dardik have had calls from patients all over the U.S. All had been told they must have leg amputations, that there was no way to get around the atherosclerotic artery blockages that kept need&d blood from their legs. Burning midnight oil To keep up, the Dardiks and their colleague. Dr. Ibrahim Ibrahim, have been putting in extended working days. The hospital, too, has responded. After receiving grafts, patients have often been so severely afflicted that they could not walk and needed physical therapy to get back on their feet again. Said Valerie Vivian, chief physical therapist: "We have seven therapists on the staff, but the flood of graft patients has been so great that two of the seven have been devoting full time to them alone. We are increasing the staff so a third can be assigned." Umbilical vein grafts appear to be a major vascular surgery advance and in a critical area. continued Walter Kalwa is checked by Drs. Irving Dardik (I) and Ibrahim Ibrahim in their New Jersey office. Dardik and his brother, Dr. Herbert Dardik (r), developed the umbilical graft procedure now being used by 30 other U.S. surgical teams. |