The Get Healthy Tampa Bay Podcast

E108: Understanding Peripheral Vascular Disease and More with Dr. Jenna Caporaso Kazil

• Kerry Reller

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Welcome to the Get Healthy Tampa Bay Podcast! This week, I’m joined by Dr. Jenna Caporaso Kazil, a board-certified vascular and general surgeon specializing in the treatment of peripheral vascular disease (PVD), venous insufficiency, arterial disease, and more. We discuss the key differences between arterial and venous disease, the warning signs to look out for, and the latest advancements in treatment. Dr. Kazil also shares practical prevention strategies, including the importance of compression therapy, exercise, and smoking cessation in maintaining vascular health. Plus, we dive into her work in breast surgery and robotic hernia repair. Tune in for expert insights on optimizing circulatory health and knowing when to seek specialized care!

Dr. Jenna Caporaso Kazil is a double boarded general and vascular surgeon who works in Bradenton and Sun City Center, Florida. She has won multiple awards including the people’s choice award as well as physician of the year. She is the current vice chief of staff and former chief of surgery at HCA Florida Southshore Hospital. She enjoys robotic, open, and endovascular cases, doing a wide range of procedures. When she isn’t caring for patients, you can find her at the beach with her eight-year-old twins.

0:28 – Introduction to Dr. Jenna Kazil
0:56 – How Dr. Kazil Chose Vascular Surgery
2:16 – What is Peripheral Vascular Disease (PVD)?
3:49 – Signs and Symptoms of Venous Disease
6:03 – Prevention Tips for Venous Insufficiency
10:32 – Treatment Options for Venous Disease
18:24 – Understanding Peripheral Arterial Disease (PAD)
22:06 – How PAD is Diagnosed and Managed
27:07 – When Surgery is Necessary for PAD
30:14 – Dr. Kazil’s Passion for Breast Surgery and Hernia Repair

Connect with Dr. Jenna
Website: Website: www.floridasurgicalclinic.com

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Kerry:

All right. Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the Get Healthy Tampa Bay podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Kerry Reller. And today we have Dr. Jenna Kazil. Welcome to the podcast.

Jenna:

Hi, thanks so much for having me.

Kerry:

Yeah, I'm very excited to touch base with you because I haven't had too many surgeons on the podcast. So this is exciting because you have lots of knowledge that we can learn from today. But first of all, how did you get into, you know, surgery and what is your kind of pathway into surgery medicine?

Jenna:

So I fell in love with surgery because I really thought I was going to do critical care and I loved being able to do anything. I wanted to be able to fix whatever it was. So that's how I got into surgery. And then vascular surgery I really felt that dialysis patients were super marginalized. And ultimately that was what pushed me to do vascular surgery. And then in the mix of all that, I've really come to love a lot of different parts about generally in vascular surgery. So I do everything from breast disease, carotid disease, hernias, gallbladders, colon cancer, hemorrhoids, but I also do a lot of the big vascular things like. Venous disease, arterial disease, aneurysms you know, venous malformations. so it's been great really.

Kerry:

Wow. You definitely have a large scope of like everything that you're able to do. That's very impressive. I just remember when doing surgery rotations, like absolutely hating the O. R. So I did not want to do that. It was just so cold and smelled funny and not for me. But I think it's so great that we, you know, have people that are experts in the field and they can do that for everybody. Because that's a lot of stuff that you treat that you can help a lot of people. So that's exciting. So I was going to kind of focus a little bit on peripheral vascular, vascular disease today, and I can't say it. So maybe I'll just say PVD, but why is this important? And what is even, what is PVD?

Jenna:

So PVD is kind of broken into the arterial aspect and the venous aspect. So arterial aspect, that's the blood getting down to your feet. So peripheral arterial disease. And then we have venous insufficiency, which is, you know, veins are not working the way that they should and what that looks like. And how that affects people longterm and, you know, about half the population has veins that don't work well, but those patients don't necessarily need any procedures.

Kerry:

Why is it that half the population has veins that don't work well? How does that happen?

Jenna:

So, part of it is that you only need 1 bad gene. So it's a autosomal dominant gene that you need to have. And for some people that shows up a lot worse than other people. And, you know, these little valves, they can get destroyed or damaged relatively easily. But it's a pretty large number of people yet. I don't really see. That many people with this problem comparatively when you look at all the people that I see on a regular basis You would think I would see a heck of a lot more

Kerry:

So it's, it's a genetic thing, but is there any like lifestyle things or other things that can contribute to it?

Jenna:

though people who you know are on their feet all day like physicians servers, hairdressers You're increasing your venous pressure. And if you're not wearing compression stockings, you can make all of that worse and so unlike if you have, you know, let's say a skin cancer or a colon cancer the need to treat Veins is, is much different. It's really based on symptoms. So you might have veins that don't work well, but you have almost no symptoms. There's no reason to do anything.

Kerry:

What are the some of the signs and symptoms that someone might see that would be concerning,

Jenna:

So if they have, leg aching at the end of the day, leg heaviness swelling, certainly if they have a wound. And there's, there's a big difference between venous wounds and arterial wounds. And a vascular surgeon can help figure out what those differences are and what you have. Leg aching and just generalized pain in the legs at the end of the day. Those are all things that make me want to look into as a venous source.

Kerry:

are there any, I mean, you mentioned wounds, but there are any other skin changes.

Jenna:

You can get what's called lipodermatosclerosis, which is like a brownish area or, and this brown area on the inside of my ankles just won't go away. And what that is, is actually little tiny blood cells that have now popped in your periphery because they can't get back to where they need to be and the iron in them stains your skin.

Kerry:

So those are like the hemocytin deposits that, okay. What about hair on the legs?

Jenna:

So now you're talking more about arterial problems. So when

Kerry:

well let's stick with the other thing. Yeah. I I'm just asking too, cause I've, you know, educating myself as well. So if, if the hair loss is more of the arterial, we can go into that difference in a second, but I think I want to stick to the vein thing. So the swelling, the browning of the skin impaired wound healing, like you mentioned, but that obviously can cross over. And then there's gene and the lifestyle factors. So anything else to kind of bring that all together before we go to how do you kind of treat it? And what is the best method for it?

Jenna:

so sometimes, and this can be very frustrating is that people will have these symptoms that they may not have veins that are very their veins might be quite functional and there's a lot of other reasons that people can have like aching and swelling. So cardiac issues, not appropriately using their calf muscles, which are the main pump of your whole leg that can really cause a lot of, swelling as well. If you have lymphatic issues, that can be a big problem as well. So looking at all of those things. It's important to look at the whole patient to figure out what's going on.

Kerry:

Right? Because I mean, we hear leg swelling, you know, with heart failure and things like that. So clearly they're going to have to rule that out. So what are what are some measures like to prevent it? I mean, you've already kind of mentioned a couple.

Jenna:

So compression stockings another thing that's super useful is pool walking because that by doing that, you want to walk to about chest height within a pool. And what that does is gives you natural compression of your lower legs. So doing that for 15 to 30 minutes a day. Super helpful really staying active and using your calf muscles. So biking, walking, hiking, all of those things, but what's really important is that when you walk, you want to be using a heel toe method. So really using your calf, not just sort of shuffling along, which I feel like people tend to do as they get older.

Kerry:

think I'm going to have to start paying attention when I'm running and stuff like that. So when you were in the or maybe not doing the surgery are you just sitting there like doing like calf raises

Jenna:

so, you know, I've really tried to focus on being more active this year. So I've started working with a trainer and I really try to make sure I'm, I'm using my caps in the operating room, but you know, elevating your legs as well. Doing yoga, all of those things are super important.

Kerry:

So I'm assuming we don't actually screen with the gene for this, but what, what is some way that people may know that? What if they did that like 23 and me thing?

Jenna:

You know, I don't know about what that actually shows, but it kind of doesn't really matter because I'm going to treat my patients not on what. Their genes are, but based on what their phenotype is and what their symptoms are. So, you know, those patients come to me, the first thing they get is a venous reflex study. And that's going to show me how bad do their veins work? How bad are they? Where are they? There's typically three or four different superficial veins that we can treat. So we have the great saphenous vein, which is the vein that was typically used for a heart bypass. Or open heart surgery, and then we have a small saphenous vein, which is the one on the back of the calf. And then sometimes there are an anterior and posterior accessory, which are now called the anterior veins. They keep changing all the nomenclature. So every year, whatever you learned in med school used to be the greater and lesser saphenous. We don't use those terms anymore. So, depending on who you talk to. Even whatever text I have, like, wait, which are we talking about? We'll sort of determine things. And so you can have other branches, the essentially an anterior and posterior saphenous branch as well. And those can be treated too.

Kerry:

Okay. Out of curiosity if someone did have a bypass and they had to take that great saphenous, are they higher risk than for having some of these like reflux symptoms? Venus reflux.

Jenna:

usually they are at less risk because you've now removed the culprit. You've removed the vein.

Kerry:

Okay. So the other, like, how does the blood then return? They just the other collaterals pick

Jenna:

It uses the deep system.

Kerry:

Okay.

Jenna:

So that's why it's really important to do a reflex study that also looks at the deep system before you do this. There's some very really interesting genetic abnormalities where patients will only have a superficial system. And so you treat their superficial system, and now they have no Venus return whatsoever. And that's going to be a much bigger problem.

Kerry:

Yeah. Oh, interesting. Yeah. That does sound like a complication. Okay. So are the, what other is the rest of the workup that, that have to do?

Jenna:

So, you know, insurances really want to make sure that because so many patients have this, and this is such an easy thing to treat insurances usually want to see that people have tried non surgical means for at least 3 months. So, graduated compression stockings at least 2 3 months. You want to get a reflux study without compression stockings on. I like to get them. At the end of the day, if at all possible, because that's going to show their veins that they're worst. And I will typically try, you know, exercise medication and weight loss is a big part of it. The more weight that you have on you the more likely you are to have all of these symptoms. We also know that that makes the treatments less effective. And so in some places, and there are national recommendations that people over a particular BMI should not have these procedures because it's not going to do any good.

Kerry:

Okay. So what about just taking a diuretic or something like that?

Jenna:

Diuretics help in the short term and for some people taking them once or twice a week can help them feel better, that can help get the fluid off, that can help their wounds heal, but that's not going to treat the actual problem,

Kerry:

Yeah. It's just kind of a bandaid ring. Okay. So after the conservative management, what would be the next step?

Jenna:

So there's several different things that are available. There's a couple of things that I don't do and there's things that I do do and I can tell you why. So if we go back 20 years ago, people were literally ripping these out of people and it was a big, long procedure. I think I've only ever done one of those. And that was in training where you would do a vein stripping and you would be have to elevate your legs and stay wrapped for days on end. And it was really miserable, super painful. And patients were just. Absolutely. Miserable for days. So then we moved on to laser and radio frequency treatments. So using the laser to burn the great saphenous vein or small saphenous vein. Same with radio frequency ablation. So you put a little IV in the leg, you numb the whole leg up. What that also does is it acts as a Heat sink, so preventing damage to the skin and surrounding tissues, and then you burn it 1 way or another and that is super effective. Probably I'd say, like, 96 to 99 percent effective of treating that particular vein. Another thing it would be. To just do what's called Barathena. So you're injecting a sclerosin and shutting down the vein. That's a little less effective, probably like the 92 to 94%. But the difference is that you can treat the entire vein. It's very, very fast. And it's less painful because there's only one little IV. So I don't even give patients sedation with that. I don't give them numbing or anything. It's an IV, just like you'd put in your arm and that's it. There's other types of treatments. There is a treatment called clarivine, which I did a lot of in training, which I really enjoyed doing, but Florida wasn't paying for that up until recently. I'm not sure if they are now or not. So you use a little device and it has like a little rotating edge and you inject the sclerosin at the same time. And it's a combined mechanical and sclerosin treatment. And that works very well as well. If you can get ahold of it.

Kerry:

There's definitely a lot of different methods. Very interesting. So, so basically you're ablating or making that vein not work

Jenna:

You're destroying that vein in some way. The other thing that many people are doing is glue. And I personally don't use glue. I don't like most of the side effects. Some people use it and have really minimal problems. My concern with glue is that that glue never goes away. And patients tend to have they tend to have some side effects, whether that's sensitivity to the material or a hardness that never goes away. And so I don't use glue at all in my practice.

Kerry:

We do a lot of allergy. It sounds like it's going to be something more like you're going to have a reaction to whatever the components of the glue are that could be. So we were talking before, I see a lot of these vein clinics popping up. So what is, what is the thing to look out for? Or what's a reason to, you know, go there? Or what do you kind of recommend in that course of action?

Jenna:

really recommend that you see a vascular surgeon, and there's a couple of reasons for that. Veins are not difficult to do. It's not a difficult procedure. I'm not taking out somebody's pancreas. But it's important to know, what do we think is going to be the best option for you for that particular patient for those particular types of veins? And what are the potential complications? Also, there are a subset of patients that maybe aren't going to get better. And I think it's really important to have that conversation with people ahead of time that, listen, I think that your symptoms could really be neurogenic, and so I don't know that doing a vein procedure is really going to make you any better. And I think it's important to tell patients that ahead of time. So I think it's really important to see a vascular surgeon who can evaluate all of those things. And the other thing that I'm always very skeptical of is if the only thing that you have to treat something with is a hammer, everything's going to look like a nail. So I think it's important to go somewhere where this is not the only thing that this person does. Because there are other options and there might be other reasons why you have the symptoms that you're having. So also remember that at a lot of these vein centers, you don't have to be a vascular surgeon. You may only have on the job training. You could be any type of physician. You could have only one year of training as an intern. You could be a internal medicine doctor. You could be a cardiologist. You could be a radiologist. Now, that doesn't mean that these people are not qualified to do the procedure. But I think it's important that you go to someone who has the most training and really is trained to do these things. There's a lot of other people that are never actually had any training to do these types of procedures.

Kerry:

Yeah. And also, you know, maybe not miss something else that could be also going on at the same time, right?

Jenna:

Right. The other thing that I think is super important in my opinion, these procedures should be done by a physician. And so, in many places, these procedures are not done by a physician. They are done by some sort of advanced practice person. And again, while the procedure is relatively easy and straightforward, when there's a problem, you want someone around who knows how to fix it.

Kerry:

Yeah, so definitely that the place that you're looking at and going, make sure there's a vascular surgeon on board to be the one evaluating you and doing the procedure. Perfect. Okay. Anything else on the vein side before I ask you a bunch of questions or you tell us about the peripheral artery disease?

Jenna:

So people will often say, well, is there a medicine that I can take? Is there something else that I can do to make this better? And the answer to that is yes, it doesn't work all the time. There is a prescription. It's considered medical food. It's made out of orange peels processed in a particular way called vascular. I have samples of it in my office. I give it out all the time. And for about half the population, it helps people. The other half, it has no. Change to that whatsoever. Some people also use horse chestnut, and that, for some people, is beneficial. There's not as much good research and data behind that.

Kerry:

How do those work?

Jenna:

So, not sure about the horse chestnut. The vascular is supposed to bind to a lot of the venous inflammatory factors, and cause less inflammation, and therefore less pain, less swelling, et cetera. It

Kerry:

Interesting. I didn't know anything like this existed. I'm learning a lot today.

Jenna:

great for hemorrhoids. So hemorrhoids are really varicose veins in the anus. I see that all the time. So it's a great little trick to have in your bag.

Kerry:

Yeah, we didn't mention varicose veins. I should, we should bring that up. And can you tell us a little bit how that is involved in everything?

Jenna:

So venous insufficiency is, one of the signs of that is going to be varicose veins and not everybody with venous insufficiency has veins that you can see. And another big part of what I do is looking at people's legs and determining, is this something that can be cut out or just injected, or does this need, cosmetic laser treatment? And insurances have gotten very, very stingy about what they will. And won't pay for you to very specific qualifications. And so that brings me to, you know, the workup from a primary care standpoint, I will get these ultrasounds and say, well, there's no dbt or this patient has moderate venous insufficiency. And that is not helpful. I mean, it's helpful to know the patient doesn't have a dbt, but you really want to get your ultrasound done where you're going to have your procedure so that. That physician knows exactly how they want to treat you and they can make sure that we have everything we need for insurances to get this treated appropriately and covered

Kerry:

Okay. Yeah. So do you normally like your doctor that is referring to you to do those venous studies or are you

Jenna:

now they're pretty useless. They can order them if they think there's a dvt that should be ruled out. But other than that, I want to see those patients and get my own imaging because I really haven't ever seen a primary doctor get enough information for me to treat that patient accurately and be able to use that to get it pushed through insurance.

Kerry:

mm-hmm Mm-hmm Makes sense. Okay. So what about peripheral artery disease?

Jenna:

So peripheral arterial disease is very common. That's a decrease in the blood flow to your lower extremities. And the same factors that impact everybody as far as heart disease are also a big player for peripheral arterial disease. So cardiac disease, diabetes high cholesterol, all of those things are super important and risk factors as as genetics to an extent. And so then, when we look at those patients. Again, this comes back down to symptoms. We're not fixing patients based solely on, you have a blockage, it must be fixed. Now, I will say that that is different from things within the heart. And so at times there is we'll call it confusion or misinformation about what needs to be fixed and what does not. Just because somebody has a blockage in their leg does not mean that it needs to be fixed. In the heart, it's totally different because if that blockage doesn't get fixed, you're at risk for a heart attack. With the legs, you have a little bit more time. There's plenty of people walking around that have lots of blockages and maybe have pretty minimal symptoms. Your body can actually build its own. It's own bypasses its own small vessels that are going to make this blockage really insignificant to the person, to the patient personally. So arterial disease, the 1st thing I want to look at is, do they have pulses in their feet? What does their feet look like? Do they have loans? What is their capillary refill? When I push on their toes, do you see that color change? And what does that look like? And if their color change, they don't really have color change or it's really red. And then you pick their legs up and it turns to white, or they have pain when they are just walking across the room and their calf. That's a very different patient than somebody who has no pain and maybe just decreased pulses, or I can only feel one out of the four pulses in the feet and has no other symptoms.

Kerry:

So are there well, I mean, you mentioned this already, but some of the symptoms are different than right? Just having

Jenna:

Very different.

Kerry:

problem.

Jenna:

So typically with arterial disease, people are going to report claudication. So they'll say, you know, I can't walk around Walmart without having a cart or I can't, I can only walk to the mailbox and back anything more than that. My thighs really ache or my calves really ache. It's usually reproducible. So that means that every time they walk 100 feet, 400 feet, whatever it is, they almost always have that same pain. And it's usually in the same place. So it's usually always in the calves are always in the thighs. It's not like, well, my whole leg just sort of aches and it's not today, but sometimes tomorrow and some days I can walk all over Costco and other days I can only walk to the mailbox. It's typically pretty consistent because that blockage is unchanged.

Kerry:

1 of the factors that you didn't mention for the risk. It would be smoking. Right?

Jenna:

Oh, 100%.

Kerry:

Okay, so the symptoms are a little bit different presentation. How about the work up in the studies that are done? Are they different as well?

Jenna:

And just one thing about smoking, I mean, that is probably the number one thing that patients can do to improve their health and smoking impacts all other aspects of vascular surgery. So that's going to mean that you're going to have more carotid disease. That's going to increase the size and rate of growth of aneurysms. So that is the number one thing people can do to improve their health, in my opinion.

Kerry:

Yeah, absolutely. You make a good point with the aneurysms. I mean, there is even, you know, very good guidelines that we screen, you know, men who are, who had been smokers or are smokers for aortic aneurysms.

Jenna:

Anybody over the age of 65 who smoked 100 cigarettes or more.

Kerry:

yeah, that's not very many. Yeah. Yeah. Ever. Yeah. So what are the different, like workups for the looking at PAD?

Jenna:

so, you know, you can talk about things from a, a very clinical and academic standpoint. So, you know, just based on ABI, so ankle brachial indices, you take the blood pressure in the arm and the leg, and you take that ratio. And that can give you a good idea of how bad their disease is. You can also do it's called pulse volume recording. So you can look at the wave forms of the blood flow using different cuffs. Okay. And ultimately what I have found is that in Florida and what's readily available is that arterial ultrasounds are much more easily available. They're usually better read than those other things. And so getting arterial ultrasound is going to show you, it can show you blockages. It can also show you changes in the way form. We talk about, you know, multiphasic or triphasic waveforms biphasic, which is also considered multiphasic and monophasic waveforms, or not having any at all, and what those velocities are. How fast is that blood traveling? And that gives us a good idea of where do we think that this patient might have a blockage. And, but the first treatment like much of vascular disease is. All based on medication and lifestyle management. So if they stop smoking, if they do what's called a walking program and different medications, they may never need actual surgical intervention for their PAD. And so obviously smoking is, is challenging, but the most important part. A walking program is really important and patients have a difficult time sometimes understanding what this is, but you're essentially pushing yourself to build new blood vessels. So let's say that you can only walk a hundred feet and at a hundred feet, you just have horrible aching in your calves. So today, and for every day this week, you're going to walk five minutes. Now you walk a hundred feet. You stop for four minutes and then you go back to walking a hundred feet. You have not walked for six minutes. You have walked for a minute and a half. So during the day, it's really important that you time your walking time and not your stopping time. I don't care if you stop 10 times. The following week, you're going to increase your walking time to 10 minutes and then 15 minutes and 20 minutes. And by the time people are walking about an hour a day again, I don't care how much they're stopping. They typically are able to do most of their other activities and daily living and don't require further, surgical intervention. On top of that, all of these patients need management of their underlying etiologies. So at a baseline, patients need to be on aspirin and some sort of cholesterol medication. Even if it's a low dose statin and I get all the time, yes, but my cholesterol is normal. I don't really care if your cholesterol is normal. We're using it for the plaque stabilization effects. And so the. Cholesterol medication is going to help prevent these pieces of plaque breaking off and getting worse. Now, diabetic patients, there is some thoughts that maybe they should be on Plavix instead of aspirin. And there are some trials that suggest that that's maybe a better medication. So for a lot of my diabetic patients, I will often based on their other comorbidities say, look, I think you should be on Plavix instead. But obviously aspirin is readily available. It's really cheap, relatively low risk, and it's a great first way to start. The next step after you've done those things, if those patients still have pain, is to use a medication such as cilostazol or pentoxifilamine. And those medications essentially improve the blood flow to your legs in one way or another. And by doing that, you can walk more and I've had plenty of patients say, you know, my symptoms have really gone away. I can do everything I want to do. I don't really need to do surgery. And there are plenty of people who do angiograms. You have interventional cardiologists, vascular surgeons interventional Cardiologists, it's everybody. There's lots of people doing angiograms, and it's not that the angiogram in and of itself is a problem. The issue is that every time you do an arterial procedure, and even a venous procedure, you have a risk of limb loss. And that risk, while it's very, very small, probably less than one in a thousand, is not zero. So, I can't take someone who has no pain and make them better. I'm not going to make them live longer by putting a stent in their leg or doing an atherectomy, but I could cause them to have to lose their leg.

Kerry:

Mm-hmm

Jenna:

And so it's really important that you talk to people about why we're doing this and what is the outcome. This is very different from cutting out a melanoma or a colon cancer or something else that's going to kill you. Your P. A. D. is not going to kill you. When you look at patients, even with claudication symptoms, you're talking about, typically we talk about, you know, 1 percent per year that end up having severe symptoms that need intervention that otherwise would result in inland loss. So it's a low risk even if they have pretty significant claudication symptoms.

Kerry:

So who are the good candidates to go ahead and do surgery?

Jenna:

So, again, it, it depends on what their symptoms are. So if anybody who has a wound, those are patients that I'm taking for a procedure. If they have not improved with their wound and they have claudication symptoms, I just saw a patient yesterday and he goes, well, I don't have any problems walking. And then as we talked a little bit more and I talked to his wife, he says, well, I can't walk throughout Walmart. My legs hurt. And so then between that and the wound and looking at him clinically, I knew he needed an angiogram patients who are very active and have really tried with a walking program. I think those are good candidates. The other issue is how big is this lesion? Are we talking about the small area or are we talking about an entire occlusion from the aorta all the way down to the knee? Those are very different candidates for endovascular procedures. Typically you want a relatively short lesion if possible. Not to say that we don't do some crazy things. We certainly do. But the most successful ones are the ones with the short. Area of blockage,

Kerry:

That's what you meant by lesion, right? The area of blockage. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, anything else to be mentioned about PAD?

Jenna:

it's really important that if your symptoms get worse that you tell someone about it. So patients will sometimes self correct to an extent where they will just stop walking. They'll stop going up hills will stop going to parks. And I think it's really important for patients to be aware of that. And if you find that you are unable to do things over time, that that should really be evaluated

Kerry:

Yeah. I mean, it's definitely, you know, a quality of life thing as well, right? If you're not doing anything cause you're in pain, that's very important to bring it up. And then there are things that can be done to. Make everything, you know, better. So, yeah,

Jenna:

100%.

Kerry:

yeah, yeah. Well I think you do like so many other things. So is there anything else you'd like to share with, you know, what you do in your expansive practice?

Jenna:

You know, I love my vascular patients because I typically will see them forever. But the other things that I really love doing are hernias and breast cases. And breast cancer is It's one of my passions. I really enjoy treating those patients. And it's so treatable. I really would just encourage people to get mammograms. I do all my own biopsies as well, ultrasound guided and stereotactic. So if you have an abnormal mammogram, you should go see a surgeon and somebody who enjoys or wants to do breast cases, not somebody who, you know, well, this person did this other procedure on me, but they don't really like, or they don't do a lot of breast cases. You want to go to somebody who sees this on a pretty regular basis.

Kerry:

Yeah, absolutely. Right. Yeah. Go to the, you know, specialist of breast surgery too.

Jenna:

you don't have to be a breast surgeon to do breast surgery. That's part of general bread and butter general surgery. There are, I think there's are some really good reasons to go see a breast specialist, but those physicians typically have only one extra year of fellowship and breast surgery is totally a part of general surgery. The other thing I love doing is robotic hernias. So to me, those are, they're super fun, really gratifying cases. Patients have great outcomes. I can do those all day.

Kerry:

we'll tell us a little bit about that. So these are robotic procedures. Are these mostly like the hernias in the groin or the abdomen or anywhere or what

Jenna:

So these are mostly robotic procedures. They're typically groin hernias or hernias somewhere in the abdominal wall. And you know, on the robot, you can see so much better. You have so much more flexibility in your hands. You're essentially at a console 10 feet away from the patient. And it's like playing a video game. And so they're, they're super fun and rewarding. And those patients on the robot, they have faster recovery times. And they just seem to be overall happier and less complications than open.

Kerry:

important? Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah. The recovery time is a big thing with that. Yeah. What anything else you'd like to share with us today?

Jenna:

No, I think that's about it. Stop smoking and get your screening procedures.

Kerry:

Yes, absolutely. And so where can people find you if they would like to work with you or

Jenna:

So I am in Bradenton as well as in Sun City Center. I have two different clinics. My office number is 727 SURGERY or 941 SURGERY which is 727 787 4379. So that's the easiest way to contact me. My, my website is floridasurgicalclinic. com. I am currently a solo practitioner. I've been in town for almost nine years. So we are picking new patients. New patients can be seen typically in a week or two, depending on what's going on.

Kerry:

Awesome. Well, we will put all of that information in our show notes and I just wanted to thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. I definitely learned a lot, so I'm sure the patients and everybody listening did too. And I appreciate your time and everything and everybody tune in next week for next week's episode.

Jenna:

Thanks so much. Appreciate it, Kerry.

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Dr. Kerry Reller

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