What is an Aortic Stenosis and an Aortoplasty?

An Aortic Stenosis is a birth defect in which the aorta is narrowed somewhere along its longitude, most commonly next to the birth of the left subclavia artery. Of the two stenosis types the mostcommon is the grown up form with a short segment ofnarrowing near the arterious ligament .

Of that narrowing results a significant decrease of the arterial pressure far from the obstruction and a very high arterial pressure next to the obstruction. It happens in approximately 1/10.000 people, the non heart associations symptons include aneurysms in the circle of Willys. In the most common form, a high pressure is obtained in the upper part of the body with an arterial pressure very diminished in the lower part of the body and legs. More common in boys than girls and their symptoms cannot be developed until the adolescence, although it can be manifested very early depending on the severity of the obstruction. These symptoms include located arterial hypertension, decrease of the temperature in the legs and the feet, decrease of the exercise capability and basically an acute decrease of the pulses in the lower body.

Symptoms and signs

- Sickness.
- Headache.
- Blurred vision.
- Epistaxis.
- Muscular cramps with the exercise.
- Decrease in the femoral pulses.
- Cold in lower extremities.
- Acute sistodiastolic arterial hypertension.
- Also sympton can be not manifested.

The heart catetherism, allows to delineate the anatomy of the aortic isthmus, the transverse arch, the limitation and their relationships with the vessles of the neck. It also allows to detect the eventual presence of ductus, the existence of colateral circulation and to establish the aortic gradient before and after stenosis. Likewise, it allows the solution of this pathology by an aortoplasty, that consists on dilating the stenosis with an aortic balloon, restoring their normal diameter, alleviating the whole symptomathology inamediately after the therapeutic procedure.