Type B Aortic Dissections

[Dr. Frank Arko]
If you're going to talk about dissections, I would talk about first Type A and Type B. I think that's one that you need to understand. I think that's makes it relatively simple. I went to Stanford so I'm going to use just the Stanford and not the DeBakey. I think the DeBakey is a little bit more difficult to understand and define. I really focus on the on the Type B and and maybe the residual Type B following the type A. It's just a difference in where the the tears occur.

So I train a lot of fellows and residents, and I get to be a little bit of a stickler in some of the nomenclature for the repairs. Often times, when someone's younger and talking to you about a dissection, they're like, "Well, I got a symptomatic dissection, or I got a symptomatic dissection with a lot of pain." The first thing I said, "If you're going to get into the world of dissections, the first thing you need to really talk about is the complicated versus the uncomplicated.

Now, you can get into a whole lot of definitions about whether those are even good terminology. And to be honest with you, I have some problems with the complicated versus the uncomplicated nomenclature. But I think that is most important. The uncomplicated really, they just have a dissection and they don't really have much in the way of anything else causing them a problem.