Tohoku Medical and Pharmaceutical University, Japan, offers “Early Exposure to Medical Practice” in the first semester for first-year medical students to learn about patient-centered care as well as the real-world conditions and issues faced in community medical practice. Owing to the COVID-19 pandemic during the past two years, we planned and implemented online training, including some disability simulations, which mostly aimed to prevent the spread of infection. The students who completed these training courses reported that the online training had certain advantages over hands-on training ; the two activities implemented were not only effective in preventing infection but also had other benefits that only an online environment could provide. Herein, we report the results and some of the merits of these practices in 2021.

We report a case of a 79-year-old woman who underwent apicoaortic conduit bypass (ACB) surgery for severe calcific aortic valve stenosis. We did not perform conventional aortic valve replacement because of the patient's advanced age and because she had a small aortic annulus (17 mm) and a high risk of bleeding and cerebral infarction. ACB surgery through a left thoracotomy was performed via a femorofemoral bypass. A hand-made valve conduit was made from the left ventricular apex to the descending aorta. Her postoperative course was uneventful ; postoperative echocardiography showed a decreased pressure gradient at the native aortic valve between the left ventricle and the aorta. This procedure is useful in high-risk patients with severe calcified aortic valve stenosis.

A 70-year-old man who had undergone felt repair for a left ventricular free wall rupture associated with acute myocardial infarction at age 66. A computed tomography at 4 years postoperatively showed left ventricular pseudoaneurysm and a 1-cm perforating hole. A patch closure with a Dacron patch was performed using cardiopulmonary bypass under ventricular fibrillation through a left thoracotomy. The postoperative course was uneventful and he was discharged on the 18th postoperative day.

A 24-year-old man with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) had received long term steroid therapy 10 years prior to this admission. He presented with sudden-onset chest pain. Enhanced CT scan showed the presence of an aortic arch aneurysm 63mm in maximum diameter and a hematoma surrounding the anterior mediastinum. The diameter of the descending thoracic aorta was also dilated to 5cm. We performed ascending and total arch replacement on December 8, 2005. From the 11th postoperative day, he developed fever, indicating mediastinitis. Open drainage was carried out for one week resulting in gradual lysis of fever and the levels of WBC and CRP returned to normal values. The omentum was transplanted to close the defect in the mediastinum. The rest of the postoperative course was uneventful. He was discharged from the hospital last January 25, 2006. Although close medical follow-up was implemented, he had severe chest pain in the morning on June 9, 2006. Enhanced CT showed an expanding descending aortic aneurysm 60mm in diameter. Since antihypertensive therapy was effective, we considered an elective operation. On the 3rd hospital day, he complained of a severe back pain wherein he rapidly progressed into a state of shock. He died due to rupture of the descending aortic aneurysm. We needed emergency operation or endovascular stent graft therapy because of the risk of rupture.

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.

An 83-year-old man had acute type B aortic dissection combined with a large athelosclerotic abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) over 8cm in diameter. The dissection advanced into the wall of the AAA. The patient was treated with strict medical therapy for two months and successfully underwent an early elective abdominal aortic repair concomitant with off-pump aortocoronary bypass grafting. This strategy of meticulous medical management may improve clinical outcome for the acute phase in such rare cases.

Anastomotic aneurysm was diagnosed in a 77-year-old man following graft replacement of the distal aortic arch aneurysm using the inclusion method in 1991, Enhanced CT demonstrated the aneurysm of the distal anastomotic site with a maximum diameter of 5cm between the graft and the aneurysmal wall. On left thoracotomy the aneurysm was found to severely adhere to the lung, so it was difficult to dissect its adhesion and clamp the proximal aorta. The rectal temperature was cooled to 18°C with the aid of femoro-femoral bypass. We anastomosed the previous graft-end to the new graft with one side branch during simple hypothermic retrograde cerebral circulation (RCC). RCC time was 16min and the distal end was anastomosed to the descending thoracic aorta. Though it took a long time to undertake systemic cooling and rewarming, intraoperative bleeding was small and the postoperative course was satisfactory without cerebral complication.

We carried out endovascular stent graft implantation in a patient aged 89 years to sealed rupture of an infrarenal abdominal aortic aneurysm. He had received left ilio-femoral bypass, femoro-femoral cross over bypass and bilateral femoro-popliteal bypass due to ASO in 1989. The infrarenal abdominal aortic aneurysm accompanied with a large hematoma was 4cm in maximum diameter and reached 4cm above the bifurcation. There was extravasation into the retroperitoneal space at the proximal aortic neck. We made a stent graft from a Z stent (30mm, 7.5cm) and straight thin-walled (0.15mm) graft (24mm). It was introduced at just below the left renal artery through a 22 F delivery sheath by the femoral cut-down approach. Following this procedure he had no leaks and the abdominal aortic aneurysm was excluded by stent graft.

A 64-year-old woman with a diagnosis of calcified aortic valvular stenosis and unstable angina, had calcification of the aortic valve reaching the aortic annulus, and the ascending aorta had some calcifications in its lateral and posterior walls. There was a 70mmHg pressure gradient in the aortic valve and coronary angiogram showed 90% stenosis of right coronary artery #1 and total occlusion of left circumflex artery #13 perfused with collateral flow from right coronary artery. The translocation of the aortic valve was carried out. The postoperative course was uneventful and postoperative angiograms showed good patency of the double saphenous vein grafts and no abnormality of the composite graft anastomosis. Translocation of the aortic valve is effective in patients with stenotic aortic annulus caused by calcified aortic valve, although it is mainly indicated in infective endocarditis.