Preoperative Spinal Drain Placement is Associated with Reduced Risk of Spinal Cord Ischemia in Patients Undergoing Thoracic Endovascular Aortic Repair for Aortic Dissection

Background: Spinal cord ischemia (SCI) is a rare but serious complication of Thoracic Endo -vascular Aortic Repair (TEVAR). Several measures including spinal drain (SD) placement have been proposed to reduce the risk of SCI in TEVARs performed for aneurysms. However, there are no specific large-scale data on potential benefits of SD placement in Stanford Type B aortic dissection (TBAD). We aimed to assess the impact of preoperative SD placement on preventing SCI during TEVARs performed for TBAD. Methods: We included all TEVAR cases performed for TBAD in Vascular Quality Initiative (VQI) from 2012 to 2021. Patients with connective tissue disease, open conversion, rupture, proximal disease > zone 5, proximal landing zone <2 or SCI on presentation were excluded. One-to-one propensity score matching was used to balance patients on 34 dimensions by the nearest neighbor principle to compare patients based on preoperative SD placement. The pri-mary outcome was SCI. Secondary outcomes included 30-day and 90-day mortality, perioper-ative complications, and 90-day2intervention.Results: A total of 2,683 TEVARs were performed for TBAD with 1,227 (45.7%) undergoing preoperative SD placement. Propensity matching produced 672 well-matched pairs. In the matched cohort, SD placement was not associated with significant reduction in temporary SCI (3.0% vs. 3.7%, P = 0.45). However, SD placement was associated with significant reduction of the risk of permanent SCI at discharge (1.3% vs. 3.4%, P = 0.012). SD was also associated with lower risk of 30-day mortality (3.7% vs 6.4%, P = 0.025) and shorter length of stay but not 90-day mortality or 90-day reintervention. Conclusions: Our study suggests that preoperative SD placement in patients undergoing TEVAR for TBAD is beneficial in reducing the risk of permanent SCI without increasing risks of perioperative complications. Further prospective studies are necessary to confirm these findings.