[Surgical treatment of a post-traumatic giant pseudoaneurysm of the axillary artery: a case report].

A false aneurysm of the axillary artery is an extremely rare complication of a lesion of this vessel. As few as several dozens of similar cases have been described in the available literature. We herein report a clinical case concerning surgical treatment of a 41-year-old patient who after a knife-inflicted injury had developed a 66x67 mm pseudoaneurysm of the axillary artery. The treatment consisted of several stages, thus requiring 2 hospitalizations. The first stage included an attempt to resect the aneurysm in an open fashion, followed by deployment of stent grafts in the axillary artery to exclude the aneurysm from circulation. The second stage consisted in elimination of the aneurysmal cavity, followed by decompression of the branches of the brachial plexus and the axillary vein. The patient was discharged on postoperative day 10 after the second surgical intervention.