[Current diagnosis of dissecting aortic aneurysm].

The prerequisites for proper treatment of a dissecting aneurysm are for the diagnosis to be established quickly and for the location and extent to be identified precisely. For this purpose, various partially complementary methods of examination in addition to the history and clinical findings are at our disposal: plain chest roentgenography, abdominal sonography, transthoracic and transesophageal echocardiography, computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging and angiography. Thirty-one of our patients have been studied to assess the reliability of the different methods. The advantages, diagnostic criteria and limitations of the methods are discussed.