Surgical treatment of aneurysms of the transverse aortic arch

Over the past four years, 21 patients have been operated for aneurysms of the thoracic aorta requiring aortic arch reconstruction. The causes of the aneurysms were dissecting aneurysms of the aorta (type A) in 16 patients and atherosclerosis in 5 patients. To prevent cerebral ischemia during operation, selective cerebral perfusion (SCP) (600 ml/min at 25 degrees C) was employed in 11 patients and hypothermic circulatory arrest (HCA) at 15 degrees C in 10 patients. There were three early deaths (14.3%) in the series. There were no serious neurologic complications in either group. The present data suggests that both selective cerebral perfusion SCP and HCA are useful methods for cerebral protection during resection of aortic arch aneurysms, although the latter method has the limitation of restricted cerebral arrest time.