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(Circulation. 2005;112:I-260 – I-264.)
© 2005 American Heart Association, Inc.

Surgery for Aortic and Peripheral Vascular Disease

How to Guide Stent-Graft Implantation in Type B Aortic Dissection?

Comparison of Angiography, Transesophageal Echocardiography, and Intravascular Ultrasound

Dietmar H. Koschyk, MD; Christoph A. Nienaber, MD; Malgorzata Knap, MD; Thomas Hofmann, MD; Yskert V. Kodolitsch, MD; Valeria Skriabina, MD; Mohammed Ismail, MD; Olaf Franzen, MD; Tim C. Rehders, MD; Christoph Dieckmann, MD; Gunnar Lund, MD; Hermann Reichenspurner, MD; Thomas Meinertz, MD

From the Department of Cardiology, University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf (D.H.K., M.K., T.H., Y.V.K., O.F., C.D., G.L., T.M.), Hamburg, and the Departments of Cardiac Surgery (M.I., H.R.) and Cardiology (C.A.N., V.S., T.C.R.), University Hospital Rostock, Rostock, Germany.

Correspondence to Dr Dietmar H. Koschyk, University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf, Heart Center, Department of Cardiology, Martinistrasse 52, 20246 Hamburg, Germany. E-mail koschyk{at}uke.uni-hamburg.de

Background— Despite growing interest in stent-graft implantation for type-B aortic dissection, there are no established recommendations to prepare and perform an implantation procedure.

Methods and Results— We directly compared angiography (ANGIO), transesophageal echocardiography (TEE), and intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) intraprocedually before and after placement of 48 stent grafts in 42 consecutive patients (12 women, 61±11 years of age) with acute and chronic type-B aortic dissection for both usefulness and capability to guide aortic stent-graft implantation. Both IVUS and TEE are superior to ANGIO to identify multiple entries (52 and 43 versus 34; P<0.005 each), to diagnose false-lumen slow flow after stent-graft implantation (32 and 31 versus 24; P<0.005 each) and to detect incomplete stent apposition (18 and 16 versus 8; P<0.005 each). In comparison with ANGIO, guide wire position over the entire length of the aorta was documented more frequently by TEE and IVUS (40 and 42 versus 25; P<0.001 each). In 4 patients with abdominal extension of the dissection, only IVUS was able to accurately identify the false lumen over the entire length of the diseased aorta. TEE was superior to IVUS and ANGIO in the detection of endoleaks (5 versus 0 and 1; P<0.05 each). Intraprocedural ANGIO, TEE, and IVUS had been performed without complications in all patients.

Conclusions— TEE in conjunction with ANGIO appears to be advantageous and adds incremental information to safely guide stent-graft placement in type-B aortic dissection. Additional use of IVUS was found to be helpful in patients with complex anatomy and abdominal extension of the dissection.

Key Words: aorta • aneurysm • angiography • echocardiography