CUMMING — A local surgeon traveled to the other side of the world earlier this spring to help high-risk patients through a treatment he created. Joseph Ricotta, an internationally recognized vascular surgeon at Northside Hospital, went to Poland to perform that country’s first ever implant of a customized stent. The procedure was performed on two patients with thoracoabdominal aortic aneurysms, or TAAA. These aneurysms are a bulging or expanding area of a large section of the aorta, the body’s largest artery, which extends from the chest to the abdomen.