[Surgery for Dilatation of Residual False Channel after Ascending Aortic Replacement for Stanford Type A Acute Aortic...

Redo or repetitive surgeries for residual distal dissection after the limited proximal aortic repair for Stanford type A acute aortic dissection remains challenging. Depending on targeted aortic segments, the strategy including a median or lateral approach and one or two-staged repairs would be determined with careful consideration for patient's age and conditions of the brain, heart, lung, liver, and kidney. Given the aortic arch involved, for young and low-risk patients, an aggressive one-stage repair of the entire arch to descending aorta through a left thoracotomy is attempted. In particular, with our left antero-axillary approach, it would be much easier with a better surgical field from the ascending aorta to the descending/thoracoabdominal aortic segments. Meanwhile, two-staged repairs are more beneficial for elderly higher-risk patients, which consists of the first total arch replacement (TAR) with elephant trunk (ET) through a median sternotomy followed secondly by an open descending/thoracoabdominal aortic repair through a left thoracotomy or by less-invasive thoracic endovascular aortic repair. In additions, TAR with a frozen ET (FET) has been a new option for downstream aortic remodeling. Consequently, in the initial repair, TAR with FET or ET has been more aggressively performed to prevent such troublesome behaviors of the residual aortic dissection.