Magnetic Resonance Angiography of an Aortic Dissection

A 51-year-old man with hypertension had previously been admitted to our cardiothoracic unit with a type A aortic dissection (Stanford classification) and had undergone emergency surgery with partial replacement of the ascending aorta. Routine follow-up magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) 19 months after the operation revealed an aneurysm at the incision site in the ascending aorta and extension of the dissection into the descending aorta. MRA was performed with 2 sequential breath-hold 3D contrast-enhanced scans, each lasting 25 seconds.1 2 The resolution of the reconstructed images was 2.0×2.2×1.5 mm. For postprocessing, the scans were sent to an offline workstation (EasyVision, Philips Medical Systems), where 3D shaded surface renderings were created. Surface renderings of the first scan allowed excellent evaluation of …