Endovascular salvage of complications following initial open repair of blunt traumatic thoracic aortic injuries.

Endovascular repair of blunt thoracic aortic injuries (BTAI) has largely replaced open repair at many trauma centers despite limited long-term data. It is important to remember that the ''gold standard'' open repair to which it is compared also suffers from a shortage of long-term follow-up and often less than ideal short- and long-term results. The following report describes 2 patients who initially underwent urgent open repair of a BTAI and represented with an acquired coarctation and aneurysmal degeneration 4 and 27 years following their initial repair, respectively. Both patients underwent successful endovascular salvage of these complications.