Effect of different types of cerebral perfusion for acute type A aortic dissection, unilateral versus bilateral

Background Antegrade cerebral perfusion (ACP), including unilateral and bilateral, is most commonly used way for cerebral protection in aortic surgery. There is still no consensus on the superiority of the two methods. Our research was aimed to investigate the clinical effects between u-ACP and b-ACP. Methods 321 patients with type A aortic dissection were studied retrospectively. 124 patients (38.6%) received u-ACP and 197 patients(61.4%) received b-ACP. We compared the incidence of postoperative neurological complications and other collected data between two groups. We also analyzed perioperative variables in order to find the potential associated factors for neurolocial dysfunction (ND). Results For u-ACP group, 54 patients (43.5%) had postoperative neurological complications including 22 patients (17.7%) with permanent neurologic dysfunction (PND) and 32 patients (25.8%) with temporary neurologic dysfunction (TND). For b-ACP group, 47 patients (23.8%) experienced postoperative neurological complications including 16 patients (8.1%) of PND and 31 patients (15.7%) of TND. The incidence of PND and TND were significantly different between two groups along with shorter CPB time (p = 0.016), higher nasopharyngeal temperature (p ≦ 0.000), shorter awakening time (p = 0.030) and lower incidence of hypoxia (p = 0.022). Furthermore, multivariate stepwise logistic regression analysis confirmed that preoperative neurological dysfunction (OR = 1.20, P = 0.028), CPB duration (OR = 3.21, P = 0.002 ) and type of cerebral perfusion (OR = 1.48, P = 0.017) were strongly associated with postoperative ND. Conclusions In our study, we found that b-ACP procedure had many advantages compared to u-ACP and we inferred that b-ACP may be more suitable for patients with type A AD undergoing total arch replacement.