Original articleAdult cardiacIncidence, Etiology, Histologic Findings, and Course of Thoracic Inflammatory Aortopathies
Section snippets
Patient Population
Between April 1997 and June 2004, we studied specimens of thoracic aorta obtained from 788 patients who underwent thoracic aortic resection. The overall mean age of patients was 58.9 ± 15.24: 449 were me (71.4%; mean age, 56.8 ± 15.17 years) and 180 women (28.6%; mean age, 64.1 ± 14 years). Of these patients, 507 (80.7%) were operated on because of aneurysms and 124 (19.3%) because of dissection.
Thirty-nine patients (4.9%), with a mean age of 72.6 ± 9.6 years and range of 36.6 to 82.1 years,
Histopathologic Features
Histologically, cases of noninfectious aortitis were predominant (38 of 39 patients, 97.4%): 30 cases of giant cell aortitis (GCA; 76.9%; 20 women; median age, 75.9 ± 5.3 years; and 10 men; median age, 74.9 ± 3.9 years), 3 inflammatory aneurysms (7.7%, 2 men; 1 woman; median age, 75.1 ± 3.3 years), 2 cases of aspecific lymphoplasmacellular aortitis (5.1%, 1 woman; 1 male; median age, 60 ± 22.6 years), 1 Takayasu aortitis (2.6%, 48-year-old woman), 1 SLE-associated aortitis (2.6%, woman aged 55
Comment
In our extensive surgical population (n = 788), the incidence of inflammatory aortic disease was 4.9%: this figure is rare but not exceptionally so. This result is different from the data (9% aortitis) reported by Homme and coworkers [8] in their recent paper regarding 513 patients with surgically resected ascending aortic aneurysms.
In our study, women were affected slightly more than men (61.5% versus 38.5%); in most of the data reported in the literature women were more frequently or
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