Atherosclerotic penetrating aortic ulcers.

       Recently, we performed an overlapping stent placement for a patient with penetrating aortic ulcer, and the treatment was very successful. The patient was an elderly woman in her 70s who had a sudden onset of chest pain in January, a severe and unbearable pain in the anterior chest, and an electrocardiogram that discharged the possibility of a heart attack. An urgent CT examination revealed an interaortic wall hematoma and, on closer inspection, an aortic wall ulcer. Hematoma is generally well understood, and a common hematoma is a subcutaneous or intramuscular bleeding bulge after trauma. An intermural aortic hematoma is due to bleeding within the aortic vessel wall due to various causes. If the amount of bleeding, resulting in rupture of the aortic vessel wall, can cause hemorrhage in the body, the patient will not only be in shock, but will die. Awareness of ulcers, generally known as gastric ulcers, is simply a “pit” in the wall of the stomach, and the further development of gastric ulcers can lead to gastric perforation. Similarly understood, an aortic wall ulcer is also a “pit” in the wall of the aortic vessels, which can also lead to aortic rupture! While gastric ulcers can be cured with medications, aortic wall ulcers have no effective medications and can only be treated with surgical techniques. In the past, the aortic vessels needed to be replaced with artificial vessels, but now the application of endovascular stenting is becoming more and more important because it is less invasive, has fewer complications, and is safe and effective. In this patient, during the observation and treatment period, the aortic wall ulceration was found to be enlarged on review CT, so the decision was made and endovascular stenting was performed.  In professional language, aortic atherosclerotic penetrating ulcers are lesions in which atherosclerotic plaques in the intima of the aorta break off and form lesions of varying depths and can penetrate the intima and even the adventitia. Enhanced CT examination does not show typical aortic coarctation and is prone to miss and misdiagnosis, but the disease is potentially risky, and large ulcers may rapidly progress to coarctation, rupture of large arteries, and critical conditions such as hemorrhagic shock and ischemia of vital organs.  Aortic disease accounts for a significant proportion of total mortality from vascular disease. In recent years, advances in modern high-definition imaging have provided valuable insights into the pathophysiologic processes of aortic disease and identified subtypes of aortic coarctation of significance, helping to better understand acute aortic disease . Acute aortic syndrome (AAS), which is very different from acute coronary syndrome (“angina pectoris”) patients, describes patients with somewhat consistent symptoms of acute chest/back pain knife-like/tearing pain (“aortic pain”), which is caused by A variety of acute aortic diseases. The classification of these disorders as “acute aortic syndromes” provides greater uniformity and standardization in the diagnosis and management of acute aortic disease.  Acute aortic syndromes include classic aortic coarctation with true or false lumen (class 1 coarctation according to Svensson) and uncommon variants or underlying preexisting lesions of classic coarctation, such as intra-mural hematoma of the aorta (IMH, class 2 coarctation), occult coarctation (class 3 coarctation), most often found intraoperatively in patients with Marfan’s syndromes. ), aortic penetrating ulcers (PAU, class 4 entrapment) and trauma or aortic transection injuries (class 5 entrapment). In some patients, ASS may also lead to symptomatic aortic aneurysms .  The staging and treatment of intermural aortic hematomas and penetrating aortic ulcers still follows that of aortic coarctation.