First attempts without cardiopulmonary bypass.
The first surgical approach was due to Beck4 in 1944.
He incised the pericardium around the aneurysm leaving the pericardium
adherent to the lesion. A fascia lata graft was then sutured to the
adherent pericardium and plication sutures were taken centrally to
reduce the size of the aneurysm and graft. The patient died five weeks
later with empyema and encephalomalacia. In 1955 Likoff and
Bailey5 described a case successfully treated with a
tangential exclusion with a specially designed side clamp. In 1958
Bailey6 reported 6 similar cases with 5 survivors. As
the problem of embolization could be easily controlled flushing out the
thrombi, if any, the Authors concluded that the use of an open technique
using cardiopulmonary bypass was not justified.