Endovascular treatment of chronic type A dissection.

Type A aortic dissection is usually treated with standard surgery, requiring cardiopulmonary bypass and sometimes deep hypothermia. Besides the well-established procedure, mortality and complications are considerable. Using the knowledge and lessons learned from the endovascular treatment of descending aortic diseases, emerging reports describe new approaches to the condition, using endovascular stent-grafts. This report describes an endovascular treatment of a chronic type A aortic dissection without cardiopulmonary bypass and avoiding thoracotomy.