During the last decade, cardiovascular surgery has experienced an extraordinary impetus through the development of the diagnostic methods, techniques of myocardic and cerebral protection, suture and extracorporeal circulation techniques, which provided greater experience to surgeons and permitted them to question the medical therapy recommendations for acute type B aortic dissection. The surgical treatment seeks to reduce the high mortality rate of this pathology in a short and long run. The Elephant Trunk technique, discribed by Borst and adapted by Palma and Buffolo, for the treatment of acute type B aortic dissection offers good results as well as a simple technique that does not require handling the diseased and friable aortic tissue during the procedure. Between June 31, 1992 and February 20, 1995, 7 patients were operated on using this technique; 1 female patient and 6 male patients. There were 2 (28.5%) deaths but neither of them was related to the surgical technique. In this paper, we present a modification in the Elephant Trunk technique, using the intraluminal ring, developed at our hospital.
Aortic type B; Aortic type B; Aortic type B; Aortic type B; "Elephant trunk" technique