MicroRNAs in acute aortic dissection

Acute thoracic aortic dissection is a medical emergency and missed or delayed diagnosis or treatment is associated with high mortality. Upon presentation, a combination of predisposing factors, symptoms and signs are used to triage patients with appropriate clinical syndrome into low, intermediate and high detection risk (1). Low risk patients do not proceed to diagnostic imaging but may still have the disease. In this group, a sensitive and specific marker would improve diagnosis and subsequent treatment. Furthermore, in known aortic aneurysms, initial medical management to delay progression is the current approach, followed by surgery when diameter exceeds 5.5 cm. Dissection, however, may occur at smaller diameters, implying that biomarkers for risk assessment and therapeutic targeting are clearly needed