ABSTRACT
Acute aortic pathology may not be a very common presentation of cardiovascular disease, but, if undetected, it carries a significant mortality (1). As symptoms are frequently vague, more than one-third of acute thoracic aortic dissection cases go undiagnosed, while in approximately one-quarter of cases the diagnosis is first established at the post mortem examination (2). Even when a timely diagnosis is made, optimal therapy may differ depending on the extent and characteristics of the underlying pathology. Thus appropriate management requires both a high clinical index of suspicion to make the diagnosis and a precise knowledge of the aortic anatomy to guide appropriate therapy. Aortic imaging is probably the most important tool that the clinician has in hand when evaluating patients with known or suspected aortic disease.
