Winning the battle but losing the war: increased population-based mortality from aortic dissection

We read with great interest ‘Temporal Trends in Mortality of Aortic Dissection and Rupture in the UK, Japan, the USA, and Canada’. In their study, Hibino and colleagues1 performed a retrospective database analysis examining trends in mortality from aortic dissection and rupture across four countries over a 19-year time-period. The main outcome was age-standardised mortality rates and annual percentage change of mortality over the study period, with a comparison between trends in aortic dissection versus aortic rupture. Their hypothesis was that given improved surgical mortality and the uptick of endovascular management, a broad improvement in age-standardised mortality from both aortic dissection and rupture would be seen across all four countries. Indeed, mortality from aortic rupture tended to decrease in all countries, however, mortality from aortic dissection unexpectedly tended to increase across both decades in Japan and, in the second decade of the study period, also in the...
Source: Heart - Category: Cardiology Authors: Tags: Editorials Source Type: research