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CC BY 4.0 · Aorta (Stamford) 2022; 10(06): 279-289
DOI: 10.1055/s-0042-1757797
State-of-the-Art Review

A Systematic Review of Acute Thoracic Aortic Dissections in Africa—The Need for a Registry

Anthony Yip
1   Department of Cardiology, Life Fourways Hospital, Johannesburg, South Africa
,
Elena Libhaber
2   School of Health Sciences, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
,
Penelope Nam
1   Department of Cardiology, Life Fourways Hospital, Johannesburg, South Africa
,
Robert Kleinloog
3   Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Ethekweni Heart Centre and Busamed Gateway Private Hospital, Durban, South Africa
,
Lorenzo Rampini
4   Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Olivedale Clinic, Johannesburg, South Africa
,
Catherine Hosking
5   Department of Anesthesiology, Morningside Medi-Clinic, Johannesburg, South Africa
› Author Affiliations
Funding None.
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Abstract

In this systematic review, the available literature on the presentation and management of acute thoracic aortic dissections in Africa is examined. Though Africa has 17% of the world population, it accounts for approximately 1% of the available literature with much of our understanding coming from registries arising from the developed world, such as the International Registry of Acute Aortic Dissection. The literature from the African continent consists mainly of case reports, small case series, and few original studies. Case reports make an important contribution to our understanding of uncommon conditions but can skew our understanding of aortic dissections in this region by describing unusual presentations and management. In this review, we describe the available studies retrieved from large medical databases (Medline and Health Management Information Consortium) and motivate the need for national registries to provide a more accurate appreciation of the scope of the problem on this continent.

Keywords

thoracic aortic dissections - Type Stanford A dissection - Type Stanford B dissection - Africa

Data Analysis

Data available for trials were not found to be sufficiently uniform for pooled analysis.


Ethics

Ethics approval was obtained through the South African Medical Association Research Ethics Committee (SAMAREC) (ethics approval number: SARAD002). This study was conducted in keeping with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki and in keeping with the recommendations of Good Clinical Practice.




Publication History

Received: 06 September 2021

Accepted: 06 July 2022

Article published online:
20 December 2022

© 2022. The Author(s). This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, permitting unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction so long as the original work is properly cited. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

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