 Preventing amputations and healing lower-stermity wounds can be a real challenge. I'm K. J. Nagersheth. I'm an assistant professor of surgery here at the University of Maryland and I run our limb preservation program. Today we'll be drawing outside the lines. When people develop wounds of their foot, they either occur at the toes or underneath the foot or anywhere else along the foot in the ankle area. A lot of the healing process revolves around getting blood flow down there because blood flow carries oxygen. We need oxygen to heal these wounds. A lot of people we take care of, especially those with kidney problems and diabetes, have problems and blockages that develop in the blood flow below their knee. So they get these plaque buildup in the arteries down here. These arteries, you should have multiple arteries traveling down your calf into your foot. And when there's a problem with these arteries going into the foot, that's when wounds don't heal. Oftentimes when people have severe blockages, they're not candidates for any kind of surgery to fix the blood flow. What we've started to do is pioneer a surgery here that turns the veins that are already existing in the leg and turning them into arteries. And we do this in a new way where we don't make any cuts. Everything's done minimally invasive with stents and wires and balloons. And we hook up the artery right here in the mid-calf to the vein and create what's known as a fistula. And by doing this, we've taken the veins that are already part of your body and turned them into arteries to get blood flow back into your foot. We've had great success trying to heal people's wounds with this when they've been referred to us for an amputation. And this has changed the whole paradigm of how we treat wounds now.