A 64-year-old man had a history of interstitial pneumonia and emphysema since 2000. He underwent video-assisted thoracic surgery (VATS) for lung carcinoma at another hospital on June 30, 2003. Because he suddenly suffered anterior chest pain with shock in September 11 2003, he came to our emergency room. His blood pressure showed 90mmHg, his consciousness level was drowsy and it changed to shock status. Cardiac tamponade was diagnosed by cardiac echography showing an echo-free space and pericardiocentesis was carried out for urgent management of acute tamponade. After the removal of pericardial effusion, his consciousness and blood pressure returned to a normal level. As pericardial blood effusion was continued without aortic dissection by CT, we performed an emergency operation. We set up an external cardiac bypass immediately and removed a massive hematoma weighing 422g, we colud then find the ruptured circumflex coronary artery with a small hole of pericardium penetrating the left pleural space and repaired that ruptured coronary artery during cardiac arrest. His postoperative course was uneventful, and he was discharged on October 6.

We performed extraanatomic bypass from the thoracic aorta to bifemoral arteries for 4 aortoiliac occlusive disease (AIOD) patients (including 2 dialysis patients) with severe calcification of abdominal aorta and 5 high aortic occlusion (HAO) patients between January 2001 and September 2006. The average age was 69 years old (range 46-80) including 6 men. Two HAO cases were in the acute phase, one of whom had accompanying lower limb paralysis. Two of the AIOD cases showed small aorta syndrome. The mean operation time was 145min and intra- or postoperative bleeding was very low. We lost one peritoneal dialysis patient with AIOD in the 2nd postoperative week, due to infection from the CAPD tube. Perigraft seroma which is a complication of the artificial blood vessel itself was seen in 3 patients but graft patency was 100 percent at 2 years postoperatively.