A New Way To Predict The Future For Patients After A Torn Aorta
A torn aorta is more often than none fatal. The aorta is the largest vessel of blood in our 
body and is essential in circulating blood through or cardiovascular system. Like I had already mentioned, most patients that enter the hospital with a tear in their aorta… don’t leave. What is even more scary is that the symptoms are often misdiagnosed. And even for the few patients that make it through this type of cardiac injury, they only have a 1 in 4 chance of survival once they leave the hospital. Pretty scary huh?
Better imaging and treatment techniques have given patients a better chance of survival. University of Michigan Cardiovascular Center experts, propose a new way to predict post-hospital death risk for aortic dissection patients, and a new model for the mechanism behind that risk.
Their model focuses on a phenomenon that can easily be seen on modern medical-imaging scans: the presence of blood clots in the channel created when the layers of the aorta separate like two layers of an onion. This channel, called the “false lumen”, runs alongside the “true” lumen, which is the hollow middle area of the aorta that acts as the pipeline for blood to flow out of the heart and down through the abdomen. As blood enters the false lumen from the top of the tear in the aorta, it gets trapped inside the new channel. Often, small openings at the bottom of the newly formed channel will allow the blood to flow out. But if the openings aren’t large, blood flow inside the false lumen is slowed down, pressure increases, and clots begin to form.
The risk is 2 and a half times greater for patients that have clotting along the false lumen than those that have a patent lumen. This imaging will allow clinicians to determine which patients could benefit from more aggressive therapies and thus reduce their risk for death after hospitalization.
Obviously this is research that is still being studied. But it is also exciting none the less. We might be able to give these patients that experience and live through a tear in their aorta a better piece of mind and chance of survival once they leave those walls of the hospital. Pretty cool indeed!
via Science Daily
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