Long-term patency of an aorta-aortic graft bypass in a patient with Takayasu arteritis.

A 39-year-old woman was diagnosed by means of angiography as Takayasu arteritis complicated with severe systemic hypertension due to atypical coarctation of the aorta. Aorta-aortic bypass graft surgery was carried out successfully and hypertension remarkably improved. An evaluation of the graft 23 years later confirmed an almost perfect condition with a very satisfactory clinical status. Extensive long-term follow-up studies have been conducted among young people after surgical repair of aortic coarctation showing encouraging results, however the situation seems to be different for the atypical coarctation in Takayasu patients, since not only the age at the time of intervention affects the outcome, but the different circumstances mainly related to the natural history of the disease. We evaluated the long-term outcome based on similar cases with particular consideration to the extremely rare coexistence of familiar hypercholesterolemia.