2006 - UZ Leuven

Introduction: Thoracic aortic trauma is a relatively rare but catastrophicevent. It may be secondary to several mechanisms: it can be seenafter penetrating or iatrogenic trauma. The most frequent causehowever is blunt trauma and this chapter will focus on this specificaetiological mechanism. Most of the patients have sufferedautomobile-related trauma and the associated mortality remainsenormous. Therefore, thoracic aortic trauma is identified in theadvanced trauma life support (ATLS) franchise as one of the eight“life-threatening chest injuries” in the so-called secondary survey.Diagnosis is based on clinical suspicion and technical examinationssuch as spiral computed tomography, angiography andtransoesopagheal echocardiography. Classic treatment consists ofopen surgery, but endovascular stent-grafting is becoming more andmore popular.NEVELSTEEN A., DAENENS K., FOURNEAU I.: Inflammatory aneurysmsof the abdominal aorta. . In: European Manual of Medicine. VascularSurgery. Eds.: Liapis C.D., Balzer K., Benedetti-Valentini F., Fernandes eFernandes J., Springer, 2006: 331-342.Introduction: The indications of abdominal aortic aneurysm repair havebeen well defined in the UK Small Aneurysm Trial. Electivereconstruction can be offered with an acceptable morbidity andmortality rate. Occasionally however, the vascular surgeon isconfronted with certain pathological or anatomical variants, which mayincrease the risk of the operation. In this chapter a distinct pathologicaland anatomical entity is described, namely the inflammatory aneurysmof the abdominal aorta, which is characterized by a very thick wall anda dense fibrotic reaction enveloping the aneurysm and thesurrounding structures, leading to ureteral and even caval veinobstruction in a significant percentage of the cases.OURY C., DAENENS K., HU H., TOTH-ZSAMBOKI E., BRYCKAERT M.,HOYLAERTS M.F.: ERK2 activation in arteriolar and venular murinethrombosis: platelet receptor GBlb vs. P2X 1 . J. Thromb. Haemost., 2006;4(2): 443-452.The functional significance of extracellular signal-regulated kinase 2(ERK2) activation was investigated during shear induced humanplatelet aggregation (SIPA) in vitro and during shear controlledthrombosis in vivo in intestinal arterioles and venules of wild type (WT)and transgenic (TG) mice with platelet-specific overexpression ofhuman P2X(1) (TG). In SIPA, ERK2 was rapidly phosphorylated168