Circ J 2009; 73: 69 -72 urgical mortality rates during emergency operation for type A acute aortic dissection (AAD) are still estimated to range from 9 to 30%, and is associated with postoperative complications such as cerebral injury, bleeding, renal failure, and pneumonia caused by longer operation time (>6 h), longer cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) time (>4 h), deep hypothermia, and circulatory arrest (DHA). 1 If surgical stress could be minimized by shortening the duration of brain ischemic stress, CPB and operative procedures, the surgical outcome for patients with AAD could be further improved. In the majority of patients, an ascending or hemiarch replacement is sufficient, as the intimal tear is generally located in the ascending or the proximal aortic arch. 2 Recently, it has been reported that moderate hypothermic arrest at 26-28°C without any adjunctive cerebral protection was safe in patients undergoing hemiarch aortic replacement. 3 We have established a new procedure for proximal arch replacement for patients with moderate hypothermic arrest without cerebral perfusion, which is followed by aggressive rapid re-warming to shorten the duration of brain ischemia, CPB, and overall surgery. We report here on the initial results of this procedure for an octogenarian with AAD 4 and have since performed this procedure for all the patients undergoing an emergency proximal arch replacement for AAD. The aim of this study is to assess the mid-term outcome of our newly modified technique.
MethodsBetween March 2002 and February 2008, 114 patients underwent emergency surgery for AAD at our institution. The extent of aortic replacement was decided based on the location of the intimal tear (tear-oriented surgery). Ascending/hemiarch aortic replacement was performed in patients with the intimal tear localized in the ascending aorta or in the lesser curvature of the transverse aortic arch proximal to the left subclavian artery. In this series, 85 (74.6%) consecutive patients underwent ascending/hemiarch aortic replacement. We retrospectively reviewed these patients. Institutional review board approval was provided before publication of this manuscript and reporting of the information. Fifty patients (58.8%) were female, and the average age was 66.9±12.0 years, ranging from 36 to 90 years.