Venopulmonary artery extracorporeal lung assist in repair of traumatic aortic injury via left thoracotomy.

An urgent surgery was performed for a 28-year-old man who sustained a traumatic descending thoracic aortic injury in an automobile collision. Severe respiratory failure was encountered during surgery, which did not allow for single-lung ventilation for adequate exposure of the descending aorta. We used venopulmonary artery extracorporeal lung assist by main pulmonary artery cannulation with concurrent distal aortic perfusion using a single centrifugal pump. Cannulating the easily accessible main pulmonary artery for venopulmonary artery extracorporeal lung assist is a safe and feasible technique in patients complicated with profound respiratory failure undergoing aortic surgery via left thoracotomy.