Abstract
BACKGROUND: Acute type A aortic dissection repair is a surgical emergency associated with high mortality. In 2007, Liverpool Heart & Chest Hospital was the first institution in the United Kingdom to implement a thoracic aortic on-call dissection rota. We set out to investigate whether the dissection rota improved hospital quality outcomes and long-term survival. METHODS: Data from a prospectively collected database was analysed following case note validation. Two hundred patients underwent acute type A aortic dissection repair between October 1998 and November 2015. To assess the effect of the post-dissection rota on operative and postoperative outcomes, propensity matching of pre- and post-dissection rota patients was used. RESULTS: Eighty patients were identified from the pre-dissection rota era and 120 from the post-dissection rota era. Sixty patients from each era were then propensity matched. Comparative analyses showed that patients who underwent acute type A dissection repair in the post-dissection rota period were less likely to suffer in-hospital mortality in both the matched and unmatched groups (30% vs. 13.3%; P=0.004 and 28.3% vs. 11.7%; P=0.055, respectively). A similar improvement was shown in acute renal failure (26.3% vs. 14.2%; P=0.033 and 31.7% vs. 15.0%; P=0.044, respectively). However, cardiopulmonary bypass times and aortic cross clamp times were still significantly longer in the matched post-dissection rota cohort. There was a significant improvement in 5-year survival for the pre- and post-dissection rota in both the matched and unmatched patients (P=0.004 and P=0.034). CONCLUSIONS: Reorganization of surgical expertise, activity and implementation of a dissection rota within our hospital have resulted in lower in-hospital mortality and better survival outcomes in this group of patients.