To stent or not to stent aortic dissection: good news for a chosen few, but who?

Eggebrecht and colleagues,¹ report their single centre experiencewith the interventional use of endovascular stent-grafts inthe setting of both chronic and acute thoracic aortic dissection,referred to or recruited by a group of cardiologists and followedup for between 1 and 57 months. The group at the West GermanHeart Centre in Essen confirm the reported feasibility and reporta high technical success rate for endovascular stent-graftingin the hands of skilled practitioners,^2–5 associated,however, with an 11% non-fatal periprocedural complication rate. Interestingly, though not surprisingly, multivariate analysisof their 38 cases revealed only parameters such as advancedage and poor health status