 My name is Dr. Matthew Samra. I've been practicing in the area for about 10 years doing vascular surgery. I fell in love with the Manna-Hawken area in Southern Ocean Medical Center. We treat everything from aneurysm disease to carotid artery disease to arterial disease and legs and different blood vessels. We do a lot of vein work, varicose veins, spider veins, and people with bigger vein problems as well. If somebody is at risk for heart disease, they are at risk for vascular disease. The reason is this. Atherosclerosis, heartening of the arteries, calcium, all these things, essentially cousins of the same family. So if you have heart problems, the chances are you have vascular problems and vice versa. A lot of times you can avoid doing procedures on patients just by modifying their risk factors, telling them to stop smoking and, you know, glucose control, blood pressure control, taking a cholesterol medication, and then treating it medically to try to avoid any, you know, invasive procedures. Down the line, though, as things get more severe, sometimes invasive procedures are absolutely necessary. About 90% of our peripheral diseases we can treat minimally invasively nowadays, such as balloon angioplasty, drug-coded balloon, stenting, atherectomy. We have a whole host of techniques in our armamentarium that allow us to do that. 10 to 20% unfortunately have to be referred to surgery. It's better to avoid getting peripheral arterial disease, and that's basically at a very young age, just, you know, trying to do all the right things for your health. Exercise, good eating habits, going to the doctor, making sure that your glucose is good, and your cholesterol is good, and your blood pressure is good, and the most, honestly, the most important risk factor is avoid tobacco at all costs. It's really important to go see your doctor if you think you have risk factors or are having pain or problems. Now it's a prevention is worth a pound of cure, so you don't want to find out too late.