Hypoxia and Medicine

can an aortic dissection cause unilateral leg ischemia?

does it cause one leg or both legs to be ischemic?

Public Comments

1. should you not ask your surgeon? perhaps a blood clot is blocking one of the iliac arteries? one or both depends on what and where the blockage is. I'm guessing that you are/were a smoker? but im not a doctor my dad went through this it was clots and heart desease he too was diagnosed with an aaa - which he had stented these are all life threatening problems and should be discussed at length with the cardio vascular specialitst SOONER RATHER THAN LATER
2. Interesting question. I'm not sure if I'm the best one to answer this question, since I've only finished my first year in nursing school, but here's how I rationalize my answer. It all depends on the location of the aortic dissection, ie if it is in the aortic arch one would see different manifestations than if it occurred in the abdomen. Assuming the aortic dissection is in the lower section of the aorta, then one would see bilateral ischemia because the aorta feeds both legs, right? If you had a dissection of the common iliac artery, then you would see unilateral ishemia depending on whether or not it was the left or right artery. Does that make sense? Or did I miss the mark?
3. It CAN cause both or just one. The reason is that the dissection can involve the entire iliac bifurcation, or it can hit just one of the iliacs.