Stage I Procedure
We identified 152 patients who underwent an ET procedure, with a mean
age of 64± 14 years and a mean maximal aortic diameter of 5.3±0.6. Among
the total population, 50.6% were females. The large majority of
patients (n=125, 82%) carried a diagnosis of hypertension, and 15.8%
had baseline neurologic abnormalities, including prior strokes (n=15).
Patient characteristics are listed in Table 1.
Stage I procedure was carried out in all patients either electively
(n=119, 78%), urgently (n=29, 19%) or on an emergent basis (n=4, 3%).
Indications for aortic repair were either aortic aneurysm (n=97, 64%),
aortic dissection (n=44, 29%) or other acute aortic syndromes (PAU or
rupture, n=11, 7%). DHCA was conducted in all patients, with a mean
duration of 41±16 minutes, and average cardiopulmonary bypass time of
161±41 minutes (Table 2).
Operative mortality (30 day or in-house) was 3.3% (5/152). Of these,
two patients had fatal strokes, 2 patients died from multi-organ
failure, and 1 patient expired due descending aortic rupture prior to
planned Stage II repair. All 147 surviving patients were triaged to
either Stage II repair or long-term monitoring. The median interval
between surgery date and death was 12 days.
Complications: After the Stage I procedure, post-operative stroke
(confirmed by computed tomography or magnetic resonance imaging)
occurred in 7 patients (4.6%). Of these, 2 patients expired within 30
days. Re-exploration for bleeding was required in 14 patients (9%) and
4 patients (2.6%) required renal replacement therapy (RRT).