A Maltese consultant vascular surgeon recently performed a complex eight-hour operation to remove an aneurysm situated in the renal artery - the first operation of its kind to be performed in Malta.

An aneurysm is an excessive enlargement of the artery. Left untreated, it could lead to the loss of a kidney.

The operation, carried out at St Luke's Hospital last Wednesday, was deemed a success.

Surgeon Alex Attard said the patient, who is in his early 50s, was doing well, and is expected to leave hospital today.

Details were given at a news conference at St Luke's yesterday by Mr Attard in the presence of hospital superintendent Frank Bartolo.

Mr Attard explained that such operations were rare. In fact, only 18 are known to have been performed in the US in the last 10 years.

The operation is extremely complex, since the surgeon has to first extract the kidney from the patient, freeze it, operate upon it, and then transplant it back inside the patient's abdominal cavity.

Mr Attard, who has worked for several years in British hospitals, explained that the artery of the kidney was swollen to a diameter of some 3.5 cm.

In most cases, surgeons would have no option but to remove the kidney completely from a body, since it would pose a greater risk.

Renal artery aneurysms are quite rare with an incidence estimated at 0.1 per cent in the general population.

The overwhelming majority of renal aneurysms are detected during investigations for other disease processes.