[Long-term treatment of patients with dissection of the thoracic aorta]

Thoracic aortic dissection is an extremely serious vascular accident which must be treated immediately. While ascending aortic dissection requires surgery as soon as possible, descending aortic dissection is only treated surgically when complications such as aortic ectasia, hemorrhage or ischemia occur. Late complications most often lead either to the patient's death or to reoperation. Late death occurs in 4-6% patients/year and about 3% patients/year undergo late reoperation. In our own experience these figures amount to 2 and 0.8% respectively.