Surgical rejoining of small arm veins to enhance dialysis fistula maturation

Abstract

Non-maturation of arteriovenous fistulas is a frequent problem after dialysis access creation, especially in the forearm. The presence of accessory veins may play an important role in the non-maturing fistula. Several surgical and endovascular techniques are described to deal with this problem. We describe a new surgical technique in which we perform a rejoining of the arm veins to create a single large run-off vessel with greater diameter and flow for haemodialysis.