The mid-distal deep femoral artery: few important centimeters in vascular surgery

The deep femoral artery is an important artery in lower-limb revascularization. Employing its initial centimeters as either an inflow or an outflow site has been advocated by many authors. The purpose of this work was to highlight the importance of the mid-distal section of the deep femoral artery, underlining its indications and advantages. From January 1998 to December 2004, we performed, at the Misericordia Hospital Vascular Surgery Unit in Grosseto, Italy, 45 bypasses employing the mid-distal deep femoral artery as an inflow or outflow site. Twenty patients (44.4%) had nonhealing ulcers and/or gangrene, while the remainder (25 patients, 55.6%) presented with rest pain or severe claudication. In 41 cases (91.1%), the mid-distal deep femoral artery was used as the inflow site for peripheral bypasses. In four cases (8.9%), the mid-distal deep femoral artery was employed as the outflow site, twice (4.4%) after aortobifemoral branch thrombosis and twice (4.4%), in the same patient, after inguinal prosthetic infection healing. When the mid-distal deep femoral artery was employed as the inflow site, primary and secondary patency at 1 and 5 years were 92.72% vs. 95.20% and 57.39% vs. 72.81%, respectively. We had two early (<30 days) failures (4.4%) in patients with posterior tibial distal anastomosis, which required above-knee amputation. In two cases (4.4%), we had to perform a transmetatarsal amputation. In one patient, after healing of the inguinal prosthetic infection of an aortobifemoral bypass, we employed the mid-distal deep femoral artery both as inflow and as outflow site. This patient required a monolateral above-knee amputation after 5 months. The mid-distal deep femoral artery is a good outflow and inflow site in patients who have previously undergone surgical interventions in Scarpa's triangle, in those having inadequate vein segment, in those with local inguinal healed infection, and in obese patients. The surgical technique is a practical, easy, elegant, and fast procedure, along with being an optimal alternative to reexploration of scarred inguinal tissue.