Results
A total of 116 patients met the inclusion criteria during the study period. Of these 63 patients underwent AAG and 53 underwent ARR. Of the 53 patients who had the native aortic valve and root replaced 26 had replacement using a freestyle graft and 27 had replacement using Bentall’s procedure. Within the Bentall’s subgroup 23 patients had a mechanical composite valve-graft and 4 patients had a tissue valve-graft. These different composite valve-grafts (ARR) have been shown to have comparable mid-term outcomes following ATAAD and are therefore considered as a single group for the purposes of analysis [9].
Table 1 compares the patient baseline demographics of the AAG and ARR cohorts. There were no significant differences between the two cohorts with respect to age, gender, co-morbidities and BMI. Table 1 also compares the operative characteristics of the AAG and ARR cohorts. These cohorts were similar with respect to pre-operative surgical risk as assessed by Euroscore II (23.4 vs. 21.9, p=0.626) and the incidence of moderate or severe aortic regurgitation on presentation (30.2% vs. 39.6%, p=0.285). A significantly longer cardiopulmonary bypass time (160 minutes vs. 211 minutes, p=0.011) and cross clamp time (101 minutes vs. 203 minutes, p<0.001) was observed in the ARR cohort.