Ascending Aorta Aneurysms in Octogenarians

Older age is often regarded as a relative contraindication for open surgery for aortic aneurysms. These individuals often have a greater comorbidity burden that predispose them for development of postoperative complications. The aim of our study is to evaluate the surgical outcomes of selected octogenarians after open aortic surgery.

We performed a retrospective observational study. We collected data from patients operated on by our team between January of 2012 to September of 2017. We performed univariate logistic regression and survival analysis to construct Kaplan Meier survival curves.

We analysed data from 430 patients, and 31 patients fulfilled the inclusion criteria. 67.7% of the patients were male. The mean age was 81.5 ± 1.8 years. The preoperative comorbidities were hypertension (83.9%), aortic valve disease (54.8%), dyslipidaemia (48.4%), renal impairment (9.7%), type 2 diabetes mellitus (9.7%) and COPD (3.2%). As for the procedures performed the majority was aortic valve replacement and graft interposition (48.4%) followed by graft interposition (35.5%), ascending aorta and arch replacement (9.7%) and graft interposition and combined CABG (6.5%). 16.1% of the procedures were reoperations and 6.5% were performed as urgent. In-hospital mortality was 9.4% and 1-year survival was 77.4%. The mean survival time after surgery was 736.4 ± 530.3 days. As for complications, 22.6% developed respiratory complications, 6.5% had infectious complications and 3.2 developed renal and central nervous system complications. Older age was not related to early (p = 0.266) or late mortality (p = 0.779). There was no association between older age and longer ICU stay (p = 0.781) or total hospital stay (p = 0.985).

Highly selected octogenarians benefit from surgery, having a similar rate of postoperative complications and survival, as described in the literature.