The Buffalo Trunk Technique for Aortic Arch Reconstruction

Currently no frozen elephant trunk (FET) prosthesis are readily available in the United States. This University of Colorado team developed a surgical technique to simplify the FET procedure, termed the Buffalo Trunk, which obviates the need for a hybrid graft and decreases operating times.

This technique utilizes a soft-branched graft along with a stent graft to create a distal anastomosis that incorporates the aorta, stent graft, and soft graft in a zone 2 arch reconstruction. The preliminary results in 37 patients undergoing the Buffalo Trunk versus 28 undergoing FET showed that the Buffalo technique has facilitated shorter circulatory arrest time, and subsequently overall decreased operative times without compromising outcomes.