Ended up with an emergency Bentall Procedure during open heart surgery

I have mentioned details in other posts on how I ended up at Mayo and won't repeat it. I had a situation where the aortic root end was at 4.8 and the ascending aorta end was 4.7 cm. That was found last October when I went in for unusual symptoms and heart pain. The local cardiologist did a nuclear perfusion test and concluded that the left anterior descending artery (LAD) had no blockages and told me the symptoms weren't coming from the dilated aorta. That was January 5 of this year. Symptoms got incrementally worse. My primary care Dr had a 2nd echocardiogram done 6 months after the Oct 2023 echo and got me into Mayo, Jacksonville for a second opinion. The Cardiologist at Mayo had a CT with IV contrast done that discovered something shocking. I had a congenital issue, a complex coronary fistula. On August 6th and angiogram with possible intervention was done additional findings were found the prevented intervention by catheter. They did an additional procedure that day to check the right side of the heart. The complex fistula was even more complicated than thought. In addition, my mid LAD was completely blocked for a long time and there was a 70% blockage and 60% blockage in the LAD and a branch as well. I also had an aneurysm off the right coronary artery at the base of the aortic root and an aberrant bronchial artery that was dilated.

Open heart surgery was recommended to address all these issues on Sep 10th. The aberrant bronchial artery was occluded on Sep 4th by coils at the surgeon request.

I discussed options on the aortic root and valve with the surgeon and agreed that IF something needed to be done, he would try to save the valve with other contingency options.

He did the LAD bypass, ligated the complex fistula, repaired the aneurysm on the right coronary artery and was about to close up when the aortic root ruptured. He then did an emergency Bentall procedure to replace the root, valve and part of the ascending aorta.

Here I am 4 weeks out of an open heart surgery that lasted from 7:30 am to 10pm. I am convinced I had the best cardiovascular surgeon n the country.

If I had listened to the local cardiologist, I would have been lucky to make it to Christmas much less my birthday.