Aortic Dissection Awareness UK & Ireland has launched, at the SCTS 2022 annual meeting in Belfast, a major new resource for patients, Aortic Dissection: The Patient Guide.

Since our inception in 2016, we have campaigned to raise awareness of Aortic Dissection and to improve aortic services for patients. As more patients survive an aortic dissection, one of their main concerns is how little information is available to help them understand the condition, manage their recovery and manage the life-long implications of being an aortic dissection survivor.

The national patient associations project lead Cliff Grover, himself a Type A aortic dissection survivor from 2017, explains:

Aortic Dissection: The Patient Guide is written by patients, for patients. Its a 96-page, A5 paperback handbook containing all the information that we wish we had been given after our aortic dissection. It ranges in scope from the initial hospital stay, through all the stages of recovery to the long term.

The Guide is designed to be given to an AD patient and their family or carers while they are still in hospital. Our feedback showed that a patients family often have to find out on their own about this condition which they had never heard of. The Guide is structured to help the patient and the family during the very worrying hospital stay, and in the longer term.

Over the last 18 months, a team of twenty patients, relatives and carers wrote the Guide, and a multidisciplinary team of seven expert clinicians reviewed and approved the content. We are delighted that both the Society for Cardiothoracic Surgery (SCTS) and The Vascular Society have endorsed the final product with their logos on the front cover.

With our charitable funding in place, and distribution arrangements through our partner Terumo Aortic, we will provide free copies of the Guide to every UK and Ireland aortic centre. Our aim, in partnership with SCTS and The Vascular Society, is that by the end of 2022, every AD patient will receive a copy before they leave hospital. This charitable act represents a long-term commitment to provide a free copy of the Guide to every aortic dissection patient in perpetuity.

Gareth Owens, Chair of AD Awareness UK & Ireland, said:

I wish I had been given something like this when I left hospital. Its such an obvious thing to do. Aortic Dissection: The Patient Guide is a fantastic resource which we are making available free to UK and Ireland Aortic centres, for the benefit of their patients. Were very grateful to SCTS and The Vascular Society for their support of this initiative and to the President of SCTS, Mr. Simon Kendall, for the opportunity to launch the Guide at the SCTS Annual Meeting.