Can An Enlarged Aorta Be Repaired?

Enlarged form of aorta or its bulging involves refers to the largest blood vessel in the body. Doctors refer it as aortic aneurysm or great vessel aneurysm. Enlargement of aorta often affects a small part of a vessel and hence, bulge constitutes the accurate description.

Enlarged aorta may take place whenever a particular segment present in the vessel becomes weak and it expands. Pressure associated with the blood flowing from the vessel creates bulges at weak spot. Bulge mainly takes place in almost every artery of the body and it is common in brain arteries or in abdominal aorta.

Repair/Treatment of Enlarged Aorta: Enlarged aorta or aortic aneurysm requires a medical emergency. If you or anyone in your family experiences symptoms related to aortic aneurysm, you should look for immediate medical care or activate the medical emergency system available in the area.

Medical treatment associated with aortic aneurysm depends on the overall health of a patient, bulge size and the specific location of aneurysm or whether a person is experiencing unbearable symptoms. Benefits and risks of the surgical procedure related to abdominal aortic aneurysm are different from thoracic aortic aneurysms.

Abdominal aortic aneurysms are of unlikely to rupture in case they develop in a slow manner and remain less than 2 inches or 5.5 centimeters in diameter, while do not cause any symptom. In these cases-

• Risk associated with rupture for the coming 5 years period remains negligible. Risks associated with the surgical procedure outweigh the risk associated with the rupture of aneurysm.
• Close monitoring of the exact size of aneurysm acts as the proper treatment for a majority of people.
• CT & Ultrasound scan after every half-year or 1-year period forms the effective monitoring strategy to deal with the problem, while it varies as per individual doctor and patient.

As the aortic aneurysm enlarges to more than 5.5 centimeters, surgical treatment becomes essential. Especially, asymptomatic patients dealing with the problem of inflammatory abdominal aortic aneurysm and have caused symptoms related to pain, emboli or bowel obstruction, require emergency surgery irrespective of the size of the formed aneurysm. Along with this, aneurysms enlarging in a rapid way and cause symptoms or show rupture signs require immediate surgery. This is because; delay in the surgery increases the risk of a patient to cause rupture.

Open surgery has remained an accepted surgical treatment to cure abdominal aortic aneurysm. The steps involved-

Incision: Large incision in the abdomen or chest area

Stopping the Blood Flow Leakage- Next step requires stopping the aorta’s blood flow by hooking the patients’ circulatory system to any outside pump consisting of lung and heart machine. This machine performs blood circulation and provides oxygen to vital organs as well as other tissues.

Grafting: Finally, doctors remove the aorta’s damaged section and replace it by using a graft i.e. an artificial blood vessel comprised of a fabric cloth, while finally sew it in the right place.

Doctors alternatively thread a tiny metallic and fabric device called a stent via blood vessel of a patient. This appears as similar to a miniature scaffold. For this, surgeons create a small incision in the patients groin area. Later on, they use a catheter i.e. a thin plastic tube for threading the stent from the blood vessel.

Surgery is one of the effective solutions to repair ruptured aortic aneurysm. However, these cases tend to become less success as compared to those patients undergoing surgery for the un-ruptured form of aneurysms. In general, only 50 percent of total patients undergoing urgent surgery or repair associated with ruptured aneurysm or enlarged aorta will survive. Moreover, individuals succeed to survive from the surgical procedure deal with a few complications, which include dead bowel, kidney failure and leg ischemia.

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