A 72-year-old man had undergone aorto-bifemoral bypass for Leriche syndrome at age 67, but acute limb ischemia developed three times after the first operation, in January 2008, April 2008, and April 2009. There were no abnormal heart rhythms or thrombotic factors, and he had received anticoagulant therapy with warfarin (target prothrombin time-international normalized ratio : 1.7 to 3.0) since January 2008. Nevertheless, he came to our hospital because of sudden onset of severe pain in the right lower limb in April 2010. Since CT showed occlusions in the right leg involving the aortobifemoral bypass and femoropopliteal bypass graft, emergency thrombectomy and femoropopliteal bypass (below knee), was performed. CT on admission showed enlargement of lymph nodes around the stomach, and gastric cancer was diagnosed by esophagogastroduodenoscopy. Since we considered the hypercoagulability in this patient with cancer to have resulted in repeated acute arterial thrombosis, these episodes were broadly diagnosed as Trousseau's syndrome.

We experienced 4 cases of graft-enteric fistulas in which 2 cases were died due to intestinal hemorrhage and the other 2 cases are survived by the surgical treatment of infected graft excision with extra-anatomical bypass or anatomical bypass grafting with omental wrap. The most important thing is to prevent this late complications at the first operation by wrapping of graft with the surrounding tissues or omentum.

The surgical anatomical bypass (ANA) procedures for juxtarenal aortic occlusion (JAO) have been recently developed. However, there are some critical conditions, in which we should be cautious concerning the indications of ANA. Between 1984 and 1993 in Kurume University Hospital, 17 patients with JAO were operated upon. The most common cheifcomplaint was claudication (70.6%). Acute deterioration due to ischemia was recognized in two patients (11.8%). ANA was performed in 15 patients (88.2%) and extra-anatomical bypass (EXT) in 2 with severe calcification of the aorta (11.8%). Hospital deaths occured in three patients with ANA (17.6%), whose background included two acute deterioration and one cerebral infarction with hemiplegia. As an early postoperative complication, acute renal failure occurred in one patient and subileus in two. In the presence of poor general condition, acute deterioration, or severe aortic calcification, the EXT-procedure is the choice of surgical treatment for JAO.

There are rare reports of families with multiple members with aortic dissection in the absence of Marfan syndrome. We encountered four cases of aortic dissection in two families. The aortic dissection occurred in the mother and child of the first family and in sisters of the second family. All cases had systemic hypertension preoperatively and presented Stanford type A aortic dissection. All of them were operated successfully. None of them showed the characteristics of connective tissue disease affecting the skeletal, ocular, and cardiovascular system. However, many members of the two families had systemic hypertension and histopathological examination of the aorta showed cystic medial necrosis in all of the four cases. The present study suggests that the familial aortic dissection may be caused by weakness of the aortic wall related to heredity and systemic hypertension.