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.