Clinical Characteristics of Acute Aortic Syndrome in Korean Patients: From the Korean Multi-Center Registry of Acute Aortic Syndrome

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Acute aortic syndrome (AAS) is a heterogeneous group of disorders that often present with severe chest or back pain. It includes acute aortic dissection (AD), intramural hematoma (IMH), dissecting aneurysm, and penetrating aortic ulcer (PAU). The clinical picture of AAS and its prognosis have not been studied in a large number of Korean patients. Therefore, we organized a multi-center registry to identify the clinical characteristics and treatment patterns, as well as long-term outcomes in Korean patients with AAS. SUBJECTS AND METHODS Five-hundred twenty-eight patients, who had been diagnosed with AAS, were enrolled into this registry from 10 centers. On a retrospective basis, we collected demographic, laboratory, imaging data, as well as follow-up clinical outcomes by reviewing medical records from individual centers. All the data were collected in core lab and analyzed in detail. RESULTS The mean patient age was 60.1±14.5 years; the male-to-female ratio was M : F=297 : 231. The prevalent risk factors for AAS included hypertension (361, 68.4%) and diabetes (52, 11.1%). The components of AAS that are included in this study are acute AD (446, 84.5%), IMH (57, 10.7%), and PAU (11, 2.1%). By type of AAS, patients diagnosed with Stanford A were 45.6% of enrolled patients, whereas those with Stanford B were 54.4% of enrolled patients. Among nearly half of the patients were treated with medicine (55.7%) alone, whereas 40.0% underwent surgery and 4.3% underwent endovascular treatment. Overall, the in-hospital event rate was 21.2% and the in-hospital death rate was 8.1%. The mean follow-up duration was 42.8 months and there showed 22.9% of total event and 10.1% of death during this period. CONCLUSION By organizing a multi-center registry of AAS, we could identify the characteristics of AAS in real-world Korean patients. Further, prospective study is warranted with a larger number of patients.