Abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAA) are those of >3 cm aortic diameter. They run the risk of rupture and ensuing death by bleeding. In consequence, they are treated to repair the aneurysm before it ruptures. In this regard, the most relevant predictor of rupture is aneurysm diameter. That is, the greater the aneurysm, the greater the…
Detection of Late Complications After EVAR
This work addressed the occurrence of complications after endovascular aortic aneurysm repair (EVAR) for the treatment of infrarenal abdominal aortic aneurysms in a cohort of 454 patients with a 5.2-year follow-up. About 25% of patients experience complications of some kind. As opposed to other studies, here, the vast majority of those complications were asymptomatic and had…
Impact of Edge to Edge Transcatheter Tricuspid Valve Repair
Reducing tricuspid regurgitation with transcatheter valve repair is associated to improved liver function, which is often ignored by many cardiologists. This is especially true in cases with deteriorated liver function prior valve repair. Instead, kidney function did not show any changes. Transcatheter tricuspid valve repair seems attractive especially in patients with liver failure. Edge to…
Patients: What They Really Want to Know about Their Disease
When we decide that 30-day mortality to repair an abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) is at least twice as high with conventional surgery compared against endovascular treatment, many of us think choosing a strategy is far from hard, and recent stats show exactly that. However, are we sure our patient agrees with us, or at least…
Descending Thoracic Aortic Aneurysms: Is There a New Plan A?
The last available evidence suggests that open surgery should be the preferred treatment for intact descending thoracic aortic aneurysms. However, this study recently published in J Am Coll Cardiol, seems to have steered the wheel. In this study, open surgery was associated to increased early mortality and lower late mortality. Despite this long-term benefit, mean…