[Surgery of the descending thoracic and thoraco-abdominal arteries. Report of 105 cases]

The Authors show their casistic of about 105 cases of thoracic descending and thoraco-abdominal aorta pathologies between 1.1.1993 and 30.12.1995. After a short introduction about the improvements in anesthesia and reanimation of these pathologies as well as the good reliability of diagnostic and currently available instruments, mortality and mobility parameters are taken into account, the last one referring to paraplegia and ARF. The casistic is evaluated splitting the cases into 2 groups, urgent surgery and election surgery, and differentiating the aneurysm type from the dissection type. Besides, the mortality and mobility are reported for any pathology, with a discussion of the parameters which drove the choice of the most suitable methodology to be adopted (ECC femoro-subclavian shunt, simple clamping). The results achieved show a mortality of 40% in urgency, between 5 and 15% in election, with a rate of paraplegia around 8-10% and a ARF between 5 and 15%. These data match the literature statistics and support the quality of the adopted methodologies.