Takayasu's Arteritis and Cardiac Surgery: an Anaesthetic Challenge

Takayasu's arteritis (TA) is a rare inflammatory vascular disease, which causes a chronic progressive pan-endarteritis involving the aorta and its main branches, leading to persistent and uncontrolled hypertension and symptoms related to ischemia such as claudication, visual disturbances, stroke and transient ischemic attack. Limited information is available concerning anaesthetic management. We present the successful anaesthetic management of a 55 years old woman with TA scheduled for mitral valve replacement, tricuspid valve annuloplasty and coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG). The choice of anaesthetic technique took into consideration mainly the maintenance of blood pressure in the intraoperative and postoperative periods. According to our monitoring records, we can say that our choice enabled a safe and stable anaesthetic procedure.