Aortic Dissection
Edited by Minhaj S. Khaja & David M. Williams
Volume 24, Issue 2
In “Observations concerning the Body of his late Majesty” (1760), Frank Nicholls, the personal physician to King George II, described an abnormal finding of the aorta from the king's autopsy.1 “Upon examining the parts,” he wrote, “… in the trunk of the aorta, we found a transverse fissure on its inner side, about an inch and a half long, through which some blood had recently passed, under its external coat, and formed an elevated ecchymosis.” His account provided one of the first clear pathologic descriptions of aortic dissection. Over 260 years later, the management of patients with aortic dissection remains complex, at times controversial, and is continuously evolving with the innovation of operative and endovascular techniques and devices.
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