I wanted to thank everyone for taking the time to provide feedback regarding our initial offering of the “This Week in Aortic Surgery” series of posts. The comments have been overwhelmingly positive.

As discussed last week, my goal of “This Week in Aortic Surgery” is to expand the content of BadAorta.com for readers and offer weekly snapshots regarding newly published clinical guidelines along with cutting-edge scientific and clinical research studies in the literature focusing specifically on aortic surgery and the treatment of aortic disease.

This concept is not unlike a regular “journal club” type teaching conferences that are offered to medical students, interns, residents and fellows-in-training at leading academic medical centers across the world.

The discipline of staying abreast of currently published research in aortic surgery affords us the opportunity to examine current practices and constantly re-evaluate those practices in light of newly published information and guidelines which might either confirm or refute existing treatment patterns. This mindset provides us with the opportunity to collectively evolve our aortic surgery practices and treatment choices for patients in an evidence-based manner so that we know that we are truly offering the best treatment recommendations.

To be honest, the concept of constantly reviewing and understanding published literature is a fundamental tenant of Medicine and Surgery and a concept that all physicians ascribe to and is not unique to aortic surgery by any means. Regularly reviewing new research studies provides us with a constant reminder of how rapidly the field of aortic surgery is evolving.

Our weekly roundup of articles in aortic surgery is intended to cover a wide-range of topics in aortic disease management such as aortic aneurysms, aortic dissections and aortic valve disease.  We will also include important information about newly published endovascular (catheter-based) and open surgicaltreatments for complex aortic disease. The referenced articles I will be citing comes from leading scientific publications and journals in diverse specialties such as Cardiac Surgery, Vascular Surgery, Interventional Cardiology and Interventional Radiology.

We will be selecting published articles and research studies that provide a global perspective on aortic disease and its treatment. Not unexpectedly, there are regional variations throughout the world in how aortic disease is managed. The choice of how to treat an aortic aneurysm, for example, with regards to open surgery or endovascular repair (EVAR, TEVAR) is affected by many variables that change from North America to Europe and Asia. Educated patients and physicians should be aware of these geographic practice variations which is why I am choosing published research from academic journals that span the globe.

This week, I have selected newly published studies covering a broad range of topics including

 
Outcomes and Predictors of Endovascular Treatment for Type B Aortic Dissection Complicated by Unilateral Renal Ischemia
 
Comparison of early patency rate and long-term outcomes of various techniques for reconstruction of segmental arteries during thoracoabdominal aortic aneurysm repair
 
Aortic arch aneurysm and Kommerell’s diverticulum: Repair with a single‐stage hybrid approach
 
Complication Incidences and Treatment Outcomes of Endovascular Aneurysm Repair—A Single-Center Long-Time Follow-Up Study
 
Editor’s Choice – A Rotational Thromboelastometry Driven Transfusion Strategy Reduces Allogenic Blood Transfusion During Open Thoraco-abdominal Aortic Aneurysm Repair: A Propensity Score Matched Study

 

If you have any suggestions or recommendations for a recently published research study in aortic surgery or aortic disease management that you think would be good for us to include, please send me a note with information about the study and I will gladly consider including it in my weekly roundup. (info at badaorta.com)

Also, please feel free to reach out with your feedback and comments regarding this weekly series of “journal club” offerings of newly published articles and research in aortic surgery, aortic aneurysms or aortic dissections. (info at badaorta.com)