Preoperative characteristics
Twenty patients underwent a redo aortic procedure (66% of the entire
population). The remaining ten patients had conservative treatment which
was proposed based on sepsis control in absence of heart failure and
local complications in six patients, haemorrhagic cerebral stroke in 1
patients, ischaemic cerebral stroke in 1 case, bilateral pneumonia in 1
patient, high surgical risk due to multiple comorbidities in a 82-year
old patient.
Table 1 details about preoperative characteristics and presentation of
the two groups of patients. Previous procedures details are shown in
Table 2.
At the reoperation, presence of vegetations was confirmed in 10
patients, in 14 cases there was a periannular abscess and 6 patients
presented detachment of the aortic conduit from the left ventricle
outflow tract. In patients who had medical management vegetations were
described in 7 cases (70%) and periannular abscess in 3 cases (30%).
None of the patients who underwent conservative treatment presented
aorto-ventricular discontinuity at the admission.
Details about blood and tissue cultures results for the two groups are
shown in Table 3.