A 79-year old man presented with hoarseness and we diagnosed an aortic arch aneurysm, 60 mm in diameter. The aortic arch was right-sided and traversed posterior to the esophagus and trachea, and the arch vessels were mirror-imaged. Total arch replacement was performed under hypothermic circulation arrest using selective cerebral perfusion through a median sternotomy. Three cervical vessels were reconstructed, a 24-mm Hemashield was passed anterior to the trachea and esophagus, and an additional right thoracotomy was not necessary. The patient was uneventfully discharged on the 26th postoperative day.

A 69-year-old woman with a medical history of mitral valve replacement for infective endocarditis 14 years previously was recently admitted after being given a diagnosis with multiple cerebral infarction along with headache and speech disturbance. After emergency admission, both transthoracic and transesophageal echocardiographies revealed multiple, extensive vegetation on the mitral prosthetic valve. Based on these findings, we diagnosed prosthetic valve endocarditis with cerebral septic embolization ; and immediate mitral valve re-replacement surgery was performed. During the operation, a complication occurred when the left ventricular posterior wall ruptured during withdrawal from the cardiopulmonary bypass after mitral valve re-replacement. After a second cross-clamp and resection of the mitral prosthetic valve, we repaired the myocardial laceration and repeated the mitral valve re-replacement. We selected the following two methods from different approaches to repair the left ventricular rupture : (a) exclusion of the myocardial laceration using a bovine pericardial patch (intracardiac approach) ; and (b) direct suturing of the bleeding epicardium (extracardiac approach).Seven days after the surgery, computed tomography (CT) revealed a pseudoaneurysm in the left ventricular posterior wall. Several follow-up examinations using CT and echocardiography revealed gradual enlargement of the pseudoaneurysm. At 112 days after previous surgery, we successfully repaired the pseudoaneurysm through left lateral thoracotomy using the femorofemoral bypass with hypothermia. In the final surgery, we closed the orifice of the pseudoaneurysm using bovine pericardium. This case highlighted that left thoracotomy using a femorofemoral bypass with hypothermia could be a useful approach to address a left ventricular posterior wall pseudoaneurysm.

The patient was a 73-year-old man. We have performed an ascending aortic prosthesis replacement for a thoracic aortic aneurysm complicated by idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP). The platelet count was not sufficiently increased neither by preoperative Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) eradication nor corticosteroid therapy. After treatment with high-dose intravenous gammaglobulin (400 mg/kg/ day×5 days) and the use of thrombopoietin receptor agonists, the platelet count increased to 8.9×104/ μl and the operation was safely performed. With a steady increase in platelet count, the patient continued to do well post-operatively. We report a case in which a stable platelet count was achieved throughout the perioperative period by the effective combination of high-dose intravenous gammaglobulin and a thrombopoietin receptor agonist in a patient with ITP refractory to corticosteroid therapy.