Vascular surgeon who performed novel thoracic endovascular aortic repair joins Upstate
A vascular surgeon, who is the first to perform a novel thoracic endovascular aortic repair, has joined the faculty of Upstate Medical University.
Wei Li, MD, MPH, joined Upstate from Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center where he performed the innovative surgery on 58-year-old Susan Benton, who last month traveled from Texas to Syracuse for an appointment with Li.
The surgery, which involved an innovative major arterial reconstruction, saved Benton’s life, and now two and half years later she’s back to her activities, including Taekwondo. The procedure was detailed in the Journal of Vascular Surgery Cases, Innovations and Techniques (October 2021).
In 2021, Benton was winded and in pain, not able to walk for more than 200 feet before tiring, and her skin tone was pale. Feeling unwell, she made an appointment with a cardiologist. Multiple tests determined that Benton, a smoker, suffered extensive and complex blockages of her aorta from her upper chest to her groin. The aorta is the largest artery in the human body. Undetected and without treatment aortic blockages can lead to organ failure or death.
The doctors diagnosed Benton with a rare form of aortoiliac occlusive disease (AIOD), a variant of peripheral artery disease that affects the infrarenal aorta and iliac arteries.
Benton was introduced to Li, the doctor that would change her life.
“He is the absolute best; he is wonderful,” Benton said of Li, during her recent visit to Upstate. “When I saw him, he said ‘you’re in bad condition.’ Then he drew on a paper towel from the sink in my hospital room of how he was going to correct my condition.
“He then turned to me and said, ‘this has never been done, but I can do it,” Benton recalled.
During the nine-hour procedure, Li and his team performed an ascending thoracic aorta to bilateral femoral artery bypass, using an innovative transesophageal echocardiogram-guided approached.
Benton’s recovery was aided by occupational and physical therapists who came to her home. She eschewed pain killers. Three to four months after surgery, I felt like I had never felt before,” she said. “I’m so lucky to have found Dr Li.”
The success of the surgery and Benton’s full recovery, after about 5 months, proved to the physicians that the procedure can be an effective treatment alternative for future cases of AIOD.
Benton and her family we so appreciative of the Li’s efforts that they established the Li & Hudgins (Benton’s maiden name) Vascular Surgery Development, Research and Education Endowment and Fund to contribute further vascular surgery field progress.
At Upstate Li does both complex and contemporary aortic and vascular surgeries, as well as routine procedures. He is one of the physicians that offers Fenestrated Endovascular Aortic Repair or FEVAR, a minimally invasive procedure in which physicians thread a guide wire through the femoral artery to the aneurysm site so the entire fenestrated stent graft system could be inserted to repair the aneurysm. This minimally invasive surgery preserves the blood flow to the critical branch arteries to kidneys and other organs.
Li made headlines in 2021 in the West Texas and Eastern New Mexico when he became the first physician in the region to repair an aortic aneurysm with a FEVAR technique.
Li discussed the FEVAR procedure on Upstate’s Informed Patient podcast. Listen here: https://www.upstate.edu/informed/
Li’s appointment at Upstate is a homecoming of sorts as he served as a general surgery resident here in 2005 after receiving his medical degree from Tianjin Medical University in China and a master of public health degree from Yale University. In 2020, he added a master’s degree in jurisprudence in health law from Loyola University in 2022.
Other residencies and fellowships were completed at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, New York Methodist Hospital, and Yale University. In addition to Texas Tech University, Li has held faculty positions at University of Maryland, Albert Einstein College of Medicine and St. Louis University.
He is board certified in vascular surgery.
He has published dozens of articles and book chapters and has lectured widely across the country on vascular surgery techniques, artificial intelligence in surgery, in the Journal of Vascular Access and the Journal of Vascular Surgery Cases, Innovationd and Techniques, and other publications.
To request an appointment, call 315-464-8272.
Caption: Susan Benton, with vascular surgeon Wei Li, MD, MPH, at Upstate. Benton holds a 3-D model depicting the thoracic endovascular aortic repair procedure she underwent. Li performed the surgery, which was highlighted in the Journal of Vascular Surgery Cases, Innovations and Techniques.