Inflammatory aneurysm of the ascending aorta: report of a case

Inflammatory aortic aneurysms are found most commonly in the infrarenal abdominal aorta. We report the case of a 78-year-old man with an inflammatory aortic aneurysm of the ascending aorta, which is extremely unusual. Surgery revealed that the ascending aorta was adherent to the superior vena cava and pulmonary artery, but a dissection membrane was not found. The wall of the ascending aorta was up to 20 mm thick with perianeurysmal fibrosis. Pathologic examination revealed an inflammatory aneurysm with adventitia remarkably thickened by fibrotic tissue and infiltrated by lymphocytes and plasma cells. Our search of the literature found only seven other cases of an inflammatory ascending aortic aneurysm. Preoperative diagnosis was very difficult in most of these cases; however, improved scanning techniques using multidetector row computed tomography may allow the differential diagnosis of this clinical entity.