Surgery of the Thoracic Aorta

The modern surgical treatment of disorders of the thoracic aorta began in the early 1950s when Gross, Swan, Lam, and DeBakey and their associates14 reported successful treatment of coarctation and aneurysms of the descending thoracic aorta using segmental resection and replacement with several types of grafts. In 1956, Cooley and DeBakey5 reported the first successful operation for resection and graft replacement of the ascending aorta using cardiopulmonary bypass. In 1957, DeBakey and colleagues,6 also using cardiopulmonary bypass, reported the first successful resection and graft replacement of an aneurysm of the aortic arch. Since then, important advances in the diagnosis . . .