Comparison of thoracic endovascular aortic repair, open surgery and best medical treatment for type B aortic dissection: A meta-analysis

Background: Treatments of type B aortic dissection (TBAD) include thoracic endovascular aortic repair (TEVAR), best medical treatment (BMT) and open surgery (OS). This meta-analysis was to compare these three strategies to evaluate which provides best outcomes.

Methods: We searched clinical trials that compared treatment strategies for TBAD. The outcomes measures were 30-day/in-hospital mortality, long-term survival rate, paraplegia or paraparesis, renal failure, rupture, stroke, late re-intervention, late rupture and aneurismal dilatation/expansion.

Results: Sixteen control trials covering 10,307 patients were evaluated. Meta-analysis showed that TEVAR provides preferable long-term survival rate (HR=0.71; 95% CI: 0.52-0.95), lower rate of late re-intervention (OR=0.33; 95% CI: 0.13-0.85), late rupture (OR=0.21; 95% CI: 0.10-0.43) and late aneurismal dilatation/expansion (OR=0.15; 95% CI: 0.04-0.63) compared with BMT. However, TEVAR seemed to be associated with higher stroke rate than BMT (OR=1.65; 95% CI: 1.21-2.23). 30-day/in-hospital mortality appeared to be lower in TEVAR (OR=0.49; 95% CI: 0.29-0.81) when compared with OS. In addition, OS induced higher 30-day/in-hospital mortality compared with BMT (OR=3.95, 95% CI: 1.56-10.02).

Conclusions: Our study shows that TEVAR may be favorable in long-term outcomes and effectively provide morphologic advantages compared to BMT. However, there is a need for prophylactic measures against stroke in TEVAR. OS seems to be inferior to TEVAR both in short-term and long-term outcomes. Further studies especially randomized clinical trials are needed to comprehensively compare the efficacy between TEVAR and BMT.