Most forms of tobacco use including smoking are the most significant factors in causing aortic aneurysms. Smoking also plays a large part in heart conditions such as high blood pressure, atherosclerosis smoking also causes heart aneurysms to grow at an accelerated pace.

To lean more about this subject click here Mayo Clinic.

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Smoking Effects Aorta

Matthew a healthy three year old toddler, from Takapuna, New Zealand has already had two open heart surgeries. If he had been born two years earlier the doctors could not have saved him.

An eight hour procedure called Norwood/Rastelli was performed on Matthew when he was five days old. In the procedure his right ventricle and aorta were patched by using human and animal tissue (cow and pig).

Matthew’s mother said "I was so scared. I’ll never forget hearing my husband on the other end of the phone telling me the news.

"Basically his heart was a mess. It was like a jigsaw puzzle that hadn’t been put together properly and with some of the vital pieces missing."

You will find more of Matthew’s story, by clicking on his name Matthew.

Picture by BEN WATSON/North Shore Times.

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Heart Donor Tissue

“This pathology specific endovascular device has the potential to eliminate the need for highly invasive, open chest surgery to repair one of the most deadly aortic diseases in the U.S.,” said Dr. Lombardi, assistant professor of Surgery, Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University. “In Philadelphia alone, up to 60 patients per year are treated for aortic dissection with emergency procedures, which have numerous risks, high mortalities and long recovery periods. This device could help limit our need for invasive procedures and save many lives.”

Over 10,000 people suffer from dissected aortas every year in the US. If you remember the 70’s US show Three’s Company, you remember John Ritter and his death- torn/ruptured aorta. it is very sudden and many don’t have any symptoms until too late. Let’s hope that the study proves to be in the green!

via Science Daily

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New Type Of Closed Chest Stent Like Surgery For Torn Aortas

Better imaging and treatment techniques have given patients a better chance of survival. University of Michigan Cardiovascular Center experts, propose a new way to predict post-hospital death risk for aortic dissection patients, and a new model for the mechanism behind that risk.

Their model focuses on a phenomenon that can easily be seen on modern medical-imaging scans: the presence of blood clots in the channel created when the layers of the aorta separate like two layers of an onion. This channel, called the “false lumen”, runs alongside the “true” lumen, which is the hollow middle area of the aorta that acts as the pipeline for blood to flow out of the heart and down through the abdomen. As blood enters the false lumen from the top of the tear in the aorta, it gets trapped inside the new channel. Often, small openings at the bottom of the newly formed channel will allow the blood to flow out. But if the openings aren’t large, blood flow inside the false lumen is slowed down, pressure increases, and clots begin to form.

The risk is 2 and a half times greater for patients that have clotting along the false lumen than those that have a patent lumen. This imaging will allow clinicians to determine which patients could benefit from more aggressive therapies and thus reduce their risk for death after hospitalization.

Obviously this is research that is still being studied. But it is also exciting none the less. We might be able to give these patients that experience and live through a tear in their aorta a better piece of mind and chance of survival once they leave those walls of the hospital. Pretty cool indeed!

via Science Daily

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A New Way To Predict The Future For Patients After A Torn Aorta