Patient characteristics
Preoperative clinical characteristics of the patients are presented in Table 1.
Significantly more patients in the elderly group were female (P< 0.001), and thus, BMI was significantly lower in the elderly group (P < 0.001). There were no significant differences for hypertension, hyperlipidemia, diabetes mellitus, chronic kidney disease, preoperative shock status (sBP > 80 mmHg), cardiac tamponade, and neurologic deficit between the groups. Interestingly, patients in the elderly group were significantly more likely to have undergone DeBakey type II dissection and noncommunicating dissection compared with the patients in the control group (DeBakey type II: P = 0.0349, noncommunicating aortic dissection: P< 0.001). There were no significant differences for malperfusion between the groups. Although preoperative walking ability was not significantly different between the groups, the Barthel index in the elderly group was significantly lower than the control group (P = 0.008).