(Circulation. 1999;99:E14.)
© 1999 American Heart Association, Inc.
Circulation Electronic Pages |
False Aortic Aneurysm Secondary to Chest Trauma
Erick Avelar, MD;
Peter G. Hagan, MD;
Theodore Kolias, MD;
Eduardo Bossone, MD;
G. Michael Deeb, MD;
William F. Armstrong, MD;
Mani Vannan, MBBS
From the Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Cardiology,
University of Michigan Medical Center, Ann Arbor.
Correspondence to Mani Vannan, MBBS, Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Cardiology, the University of Michigan Medical Center, L3119 Women's, 1500 E Medical Center Dr, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-0273.
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Introduction
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 Top
 Introduction
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A 64-year-old
woman with a history of coronary artery bypass
graft surgery 2
years earlier presented with a bulging mass
on the anterior
chest wall 2 weeks after minor chest trauma.
She denied having any
symptoms, and her examination was remarkable
only for a pulsatile mass
in the left parasternal area of the
anterior chest wall. Her ECG
revealed sinus rhythm with nonspecific
ST-T changes. Her chest
radiograph showed marked cardiomegaly
with a wide mediastinum. A
transesophageal echocardiogram (TEE)
was performed and
confirmed the diagnosis of aortic pseudoaneurysm.
A short-axis
view of the aortic valve (A) is shown in Figure
1
.
Intraoperative TEE with a rotational scanning acquisition
was
performed, and a 3-dimensional surface-rendered reconstruction
was
obtained.
Successive frames of the 3-dimensional
echocardiographic reconstruction (Figure 2) show the large para-aortic false
aneurysm. The leakage site on the ascending aorta is clearly
visible (white arrow). The mass with a different gray scale (black
arrows) probably represents progressive aneurysm
thrombosis.
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Footnotes
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The editor of Images in Cardiovascular Medicine is Hugh A. McAllister,
Jr, MD, Chief, Department of Pathology, St Luke's Episcopal
Hospital and Texas Heart Institute, and Clinical Professor of
Pathology, University of Texas Medical School and Baylor College
of Medicine.
Circulation encourages readers to submit cardiovascular images to Dr Hugh A. McAllister, Jr, St Luke's Episcopal Hospital and Texas Heart Institute, 6720 Bertner Ave, MC1-267, Houston, TX 77030.
