[Aortobronchial fistulae as late complications following the surgical correction of aortic isthmus stenosis].

Three patients (2 men, aged 39 and 52 years, one woman, aged 47 years) developed hemoptysis 3-19 years after surgical resection of coarctation of the aorta. Digital subtraction angiography in the two men was suspicious of an aortobronchial fistula. An emergency thoracotomy revealed the diagnosis in the woman: she died during the operation of intractable arterial bleeding, the initial operation having been atypical (insertion of a graft extending across the isthmus to the ascending aorta). The 52-year-old man died of left heart failure after pneumonectomy (for massive bleeding into the left lung). An aneurysm sack at the aortic isthmus was resected and a vascular graft implanted in the 39-year-old man. There have been no further hemoptyses. These cases emphasize the need for including aortobronchial fistula as a cause of hemoptysis.