Preface

We are delighted to have served as the guest co-editors of this special issue of the Annals of Cardiothoracic Surgery, which focuses entirely on the surgical treatment of disease affecting the thoracoabdominal aorta. We are extremely fortunate to have spent our careers in Houston, where so much of the pioneering work in this field was done. Nearly 55 years ago at the American Surgical Association meeting, Dr. Arthur Blakemore beautifully characterized Dr. Michael DeBakey’s first reported series of patients who underwent surgical treatment of thoracoabdominal aortic aneurysms (1).