During embryonic life, events may alter the normal growth and fusion of the endocardial tube, the paired dorsal aortae, and the vitelline plexus, leading to anomalies and variants of the mature axial arterial system.1 Many of these are well known, especially those associated with the aorta, heart, and umbilical artery.1,2 Vitelline variants have also been found that are either associated with M...

Severe calcification of the ascending aorta (porcelain aorta) is a very difficult condition in cardiac surgery because of a high embolization potential during the process of cannulation, aortic cross-clamping and a particular difficulty to suture the proximal anastomosis. We described a case of a 68-year-old female referred to our Institute due to unstable angina. Further diagnostics revealed a...

A CT-scan of a 75-year-old patient showed an aneurysm of the descending aorta with a maximum diameter of 4.8 cm involving the left subclavian artery. Due to the fact that the patient had several comorbidities including a severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease he was treated only conservatively. However, there were several interesting findings on the CT-scan: the branching pattern of the a...

Harling et al. [1] had a motivating article about surgical patch angioplasty of the left main coronary artery (LMCA). They gave a comprehensive and up-dated review of the issue including the different surgical methods and the variety of patch materials used so far: pericardium, saphenous vein, internal thoracic artery and pulmonary artery. However, they also stated that the optimal patch graft ...

Right-sided aortic arch with an aberrant left innominate artery arising from the pulmonary is a very rare finding in tetralogy of fallot (TOF). A 2-year-old boy presented for routine intracardiac repair TOF. angiogram raised suspicion abnormal origin. 640-slice CT was done to delineate anatomy. The re-implanted descending aorta and performed.

Correspondence To the Editor: Aberrant right subclavian artery (ARSA) is a congenital vascular anomaly. Stanford‑type A aortic dissection with ARSA is rare. We reported a strategy that involved the use of a four‑branch prosthetic graft to reconstruct the four supra‑arch branch vessels for a Stanford type A aortic dissection with ARSA. A 46‑year‑old male was admitted to Beijing Anzhen Hospital b...

Proliferation and hypertrophy of vascular smooth muscle cells represent hallmark features of vessel remodeling secondary to hypertension. The intermediate filament protein nestin was recently identified in vascular smooth muscle cells and in other cell types directly participated in proliferation. The present study tested the hypothesis that vessel remodeling secondary to hypertension was chara...

Aorta is the largest artery in the body. Anatomically, it is traditionally divided into the ascending, the aortic arch, the descending, the thoracic and the abdominal aorta. Collagen is one of the most important components of the aortic wall. Its concentration and its total amount play a significant role in the aortas’ function and mechanical properties, such as tensile strength and stiffness. ...

Six patients with anomalous origin of one pulmonary artery from the ascending aorta were reviewed. Four had anomalous origin of the right pulmonary artery and two had anomalous origin of the left pulmonary artery from the ascending aorta. Two of these six patients had tetralogy of Fallot. Two patients died in the first month of life. No changes in the pulmonary vasculature were seen at necropsy...

Rules are presented for the diagnosis of arterioventricular discordances and the spatial position of the ventricles in these cardiopathies by means of angiocardiography and the position of cardiac catheters. Because these rules are based on previous anatomo-embryological findings, the normal development of the conus and the truncus is briefly analysed. The probable morphogenesis of this group o...