Ricerc@Sapienza

Postoperative thoracic aortic false aneurysm is a challenging complication of aortic surgery. We describe our surgicalapproach for an 8-cm thoracic aorta false aneurysm in a 59-year-old woman who had previously undergone aortic surgery. Surgery must be planned carefully because massive hemorrhage during resternotomy is a dreadful complication of postoperative false aneurysm surgery. We decided to start cardiopulmonary bypass before resternotomy and use a ventricular vent from the apex, an endo-vent from the pulmonary artery, and an endo-balloon with antegrade blood cardioplegia.

A 70-year-old woman presented to our attention with a painless pulsating mass at the level of the upper left thigh without any previous history of trauma, arterial surgery, or puncture of the femoral artery. Duplex ultrasound showed a nodular angiomatous-like formation with deep venous compression; computed tomographic angiography and magnetic resonance imaging reported the presence of capsulated lesion vascularized by muscular branch of deep femoral artery (DFA). The patient underwent surgical excision of a very rare thrombized DFA branch false aneurysm.