Surgical correction of pseudoaneurysm of the extracranial carotid artery: the usefulness of retrograde cerebral perfusion--a case report.

Although a pseudoaneurysm of the common carotid artery is not encountered frequently, its surgical treatment is technically challenging. A case is reported of a large pseudoaneurysm of the right common carotid artery in a 45-year-old woman, presenting with respiratory distress, following a wound infection 3 months after tracheoplasty. Instead of a vascular shunt, deep hypothermic circulatory arrest with retrograde cerebral perfusion was used for protection of the brain against hypoxia during the arterial reconstruction. The pseudoaneurysm was easily corrected with an autologous saphenous vein, without any hazardous dissection through the dense fibrosis around the fragile pseudoaneurysm, under circulatory arrest.