Repeat Surgery in Chronic Aortic Dissection: A New Technique without Touching the Native Aorta.

Background:  Repeat surgery of the chronically dissected aorta following repair of a Type-A acute aortic dissection (AAD) still represents a challenge. The proposed surgical options are as follows: (1) staged procedure with elephant trunk (ET) technique, (2) traditional frozen elephant trunk (FET) intervention, and (3) beating heart cerebral vessel debranching followed by thoracic endovascular aortic repair (TEVAR). However, a marked enlargement of the proximal descending thoracic aorta might make it difficult to perform FET/ET intervention. Furthermore, because in conventional surgery for AAD, a prosthetic graft replacement is generally limited to the ascending aorta, and in repeat surgery, this short Dacron graft rarely provides enough room to allow a beating heart cerebral vessel debranching and obtaining a reliable landing zone for the implantation of a firmly anchored stent graft.

Methods:  We retrospectively reviewed all the five consecutive patients treated in our institution, between 2014 and 2017, for chronic aortic dissection after successful surgical treatment of acute Type-A aortic dissection with graft replacement limited to the ascending aorta. The five patients underwent repair utilizing a modified FET technique with total aortic arch and upper descending aorta exclusion without touching the native dissected aorta.

Results:  No early- or midterm mortality was observed. Mean time interval between the initial and the reoperative procedure was 26 months (range, 3-80 months). No patient had a minor/major neurologic event. Mean circulatory arrest time was 16 minutes (range, 11-25 minutes). Mean follow-up time was 22 months (range, 9-42 months).

Conclusions:  We report our initial experience with a modified FET technique realized by anastomosing the stent graft with the previously implanted ascending aortic graft in Hishimaru's zone 0 and by rerouting all cerebral vessels without "touching" the native chronically dissected aorta. A larger number of patients and a longer follow-up will be required to confirm these initial encouraging results.