Malignant aortitis : hypoplasia of the aorta / by H.D. Rolleston.

  • Humphry Rolleston
Date:
1915?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Malignant aortitis : hypoplasia of the aorta / by H.D. Rolleston. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    HYPOPLASIA OF THE AORTA. This condition, in which an aortic lesion com¬ parable to malignant endocarditis presents the clinical features of the latter disease, is very rare. Acute aortitis as the result of various infections— for example, influenza—has long been recognised, but the symptoms are not those of malignant endo¬ carditis and, as Sir Clifford Allbutt1 has insisted, are prone to assume an anginoid character. Infec¬ tive or malignant aortitis may accompany and be secondary to malignant endocarditis, the aortic lesion being within reach of vegetations on the aortic valves and merely an extension by contact of the cardiac disease. There is another form of infective aortitis which must be distinguished from that now under discussion; Scheuer8 has collected seven cases of infective suppuration beginning in the media and adventitia of the aorta, which per¬ forates from without inwards and leads to rupture of the aorta. In Scheuer’s own case, which was one of pyaemia, four pints of blood were found in the left pleural cavity. In the case recorded by Vanzettilj the cause of the lesion was embolism of the vasa vasorum by the pneumococcus. Infec¬ tive and ulcerative aortitis, like malignant endo¬ carditis, is more likely to supervene on an old lesion than to occur in a previously healthy part. Thus the aorta is usually already atheromatous, as in F. C. Turner’s10 cases and in Boinet and Romany’s case of staphylococcic vegetations in an atheromatous aorta after influenzal broncho¬ pneumonia. As examples of infective aortitis without previous disease of the vessel wall refer¬ ence may be made to Schweizer’s9 case of a boy,