A man nearing his 100th birthday has survived surgery for aortic dissection, a condition with a high fatality rate, and returned to full health. He is the oldest patient in South Korea to undergo the procedure.
Asan Medical Center said on the 8th that Lee Seung-man, who received aortic dissection surgery from Professor Koo Min-jung of the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery on June 29, recovered within a month and a half and went home.
Born on Aug. 5, 1926, in Gangwon Province, Lee worked as an elementary school teacher before retiring and lived in Seoul with his son and daughter-in-law. Despite his age, he was in relatively good health, able to move around indoors for daily activities and eating three full meals a day. Late on the night of June 28, Lee was taken to the emergency room at Asan Medical Center after suffering a sudden decline in consciousness and vomiting. A chest computed tomography (CT) scan showed a tear in the wall of the aorta, the large blood vessel that carries blood from the heart to the rest of the body. Known medically as aortic dissection, the condition is so lethal that the probability of death has been reported to rise by 1% with each hour that passes after symptoms appear. The dissection in Lee's case occurred in the ascending aorta, close to the heart, meaning the damaged section had to be replaced with an artificial vessel as quickly as possible. The difficulty was that Lee was 99 years old at the time, making the operation itself extremely risky. After doctors explained that the chances of a successful operation were only 30% to 40%, but that he would likely survive little more than a week without it, the family decided to proceed.
Lee went into the operating room after 2 a.m. and was moved safely to the intensive care unit about five hours later. Following a month of intensive care, he recovered enough to be transferred to a general ward, and marked his 100th birthday on the 5th of last month alongside his medical team. Koo, who performed the operation, prepared a cake herself and held a small birthday party in his hospital room for the patient who had come through the difficult surgery. "In all my life, this was the first birthday I have spent in a hospital room," Lee said. "I am grateful just to have my life saved, and to receive such generous congratulations on top of that — I am truly thankful."
