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Reviews

Progress of the treatment for extended aortic aneurysms; is the frozen elephant trunk technique the next standard in the treatment of complex aortic disease including the arch?

Department of Cardiac Surgery, Heidelberg University Hospital, Im Neuenheimer Feld 110, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany

Received 18 October 2007; received in revised form 11 February 2008; accepted 14 February 2008.

^_* Corresponding author. Tel.: +49 6211 56 6271; fax: +49 6221 56 5585. (Email: Matthias.karck{at}med.uni-hedielberg.de).

Patients with extensive aortic aneurysms involving the ascending aorta, aortic arch, and the descending aorta are still considered to be a challenge for many cardiovascular surgeons. The introduction of the elephant trunk technique by Borst et al. in 1983 has greatly facilitated surgery on this kind of pathology and this technique has been recognized as a standard modality for treatment of extended aortic aneurysms. As a next step, the frozen elephant trunk technique has been introduced in some institutes in the late 1990s. With this technique, surgery is performed through a median sternotomy, and an endovascular stent-graft is placed into the descending aorta in an antegrade fashion through the opened aortic arch. Then the ascending aorta and the aortic arch are replaced conventionally. The frozen elephant trunk technique enables one-stage repair of extended aortic aneurysms in a certain patient cohort with similar operative mortality as with the conventional elephant trunk technique, in which a second-stage operation is a prerequisite. Although the surgical strategy should be adjusted specifically to each patient's individual pathology, the frozen elephant trunk technique may become the next standard treatment for extended aortic aneurysm instead of its conventional variant.

Key Words: Frozen elephant trunk • Extended thoracic aneurysms • Endovascular stent-graft