Doctors at the University of California Los Angeles used a new treatment to remove a two foot long blood clot from a patient at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center.

Doctors at the University of California Los Angeles used a new treatment to remove a two foot long blood clot from a patient at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center.

62 year old Todd Dunlap was given the choice between open heart surgery and a new method called the AngioVac that would remove the blood clot using suction to vacuum it out of his heart.

Dunlap chose the less invasive procedure and became the first patient to successfully undergo the AngioVac treatment in the state of California.

The AngioVac procedure took three hours, and Dunlap was discharged from the hospital a week later after three days in intensive care, and four days in the cardiac ward of the hospital.

Doctor John Moriarty, an interventional radiologist from UCLA who worked on the procedure said: “Once in place, the AngioVac quickly sucked the deadly clot out of Mr. Dunlap's heart and filtered out the solid tissue. The system then restored the cleansed blood through a blood vessel near the groin, eliminating the need for a blood transfusion.”

Compared to the AngioVac treatment, open heart surgery takes longer and can involve splitting apart the breastbone resulting in a longer and more difficult recovery time.