Malakh Shrestha of the Hannover Medical School, Hannover, Germany, describes his experience using the frozen elephant trunk technique for complex aortic arch surgery. He discusses indications and methods to reduce the risk of paraplegia and the use of the Thoraflex graft.
This presentation was originally given during the SCTS Ionescu University program at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the Society for Cardiothoracic Surgery in Great Britain and Ireland. This content is published with the permission of SCTS. Please click here for more information on SCTS educational programs.
Excellent talk.
Always at the forefront of aortic surgery.
Important points such as myocardial protection (beating heart arch surgery) and moving proximally the distal anastomosis in the arch have dramatically decreased the mortality and morbidity of this huge operations. Hopefully more centers will adopt this strategy and more patients will benefit.
As you point in chronic dissections the use of FET is still very controversial and results of classic ET in this scenario are very good with definitely less paraplegia at front. The attempts at expansion of membranes in chronic dissection with FET are often futile.
Thank you for sharing your insights, tricks and the Hannover experience.