To prevent amputation in patients with severe vascular disease, a device turns veins into arteries

An innocuous slip while cutting her toenails created a wound on Cynthia Elford’s right foot that wouldn’t heal.

The Hermitage, Pennsylvania resident has vasculitis, a genetic disease that inflames the blood vessels and stops blood from flowing to the legs. She had already lost her left leg below the knee after a sunburn on the tip of her toe got progressively worse. She was determined to keep her right one.

“I didn’t want my leg off because I don’t know that I would have been able, emotionally, to get through it,” Elford said.