Raj K. Bose, MD

Gary J. Becker, MD

An 81-year-old Tucson man whose aorta was partially torn in a car accident earlier this month is recovering after University Medical Center physicians were able to repair the vessel without open-chest surgery.

The aorta is the largest artery in the body and the primary blood vessel leading from the heart to the body. A majority of patients with a torn aorta bleed to death before they reach a trauma center, but fortunately for this patient, bleeding from the small tear in his aorta was contained in the tissues, forming a "pseudo-aneurysm" at very high risk of rupture.

The traditional treatment for aorta repair is to open the chest, put the heart on a heart-lung machine and sew up the tear. "It's major surgery that we hate to inflict on a patient who is critically injured already, but we do it because it save lives," said cardiac surgeon Raj K. Bose, MD, assistant professor in The University of Arizona Department of Surgery.

Instead, the trauma team stabilized the patient while surgeons sought out a new device approved by the Food and Drug Administration just last year to repair thoracic aortic aneurysm on an elective basis.

On May 16, a few days after the car accident, interventional radiologist Gary J. Becker, MD, and Dr. Bose inserted a catheter into the patient's femoral artery through a 2-inch incision in the groin. Using X-ray imaging to check their progress, they snaked the catheter about 2 feet through the artery to the aorta. There, they deployed a GoreTex "endograft", or stent, 4 inches long and slightly more than 1 inch in diameter that covered the hole in the aorta, removing any further threat of hemorrhage.