[Bilateral aorto-iliac prosthesis. Long-term results]

Over a 12-year period (1975-1987), 565 patients (male: 94.5 percent; female: 5.5 percent) underwent aorto-iliac bilateral reconstruction. The operations were performed by the same surgical team and all patients were followed up for 13 years. The patients' mean age was 59.4 years; 16.6 percent were over 70; 16 percent had a non-fissured aneurysm. The postoperative mortality rate was 2.8 percent, with relatively few deaths of cardiovascular origin (0.5 percent). The late mortality rate was significantly higher than that of an age-matched control population. Arteritis and its surgical treatment accounted for a low proportion of late deaths: 10.7 percent as opposed to other cardiovascular diseases (33 percent) and chiefly to cancer (39 percent)--a figure not found in other reports. Five percent of the patients had to be amputated soon after the operation or later; this is a low figure compared with the 33 percent of patients who had one limb threatened before reconstructive surgery. After the aorto-iliac reconstruction 81 percent of the patients remained considerably improved at 5 years and 67 percent at 10 years. Long-term arterial patency was satisfactory (95 percent at 5 years, 90 percent at 10 years). This type of surgery, therefore, benefits the patients' functions and their life: it avoids rupture of aneurysms and sedentarity due to a disabling intermittent claudication, and it considerably increases the duration of life.