Surgery of the thoracic aorta. Recent experience at Groote Schuur and Red Cross War Memorial Children's Hospitals, Cape Town.

Between September 1984 and June 1988, 46 patients (8 traumatic rupture, 10 acute and 11 chronic dissection, 17 true aneurysms) with lesions of the thoracic aorta were managed surgically. Four patients died after surgery for acute dissection, 2 after management of chronixc aneurysm and 1 after replacement of the descending aorta for a chronic degenerative aneurysm. In 2 patients the operation was complicated by paraplegia