Talk:Double aortic arch

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A fact from Double aortic arch appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 3 May 2009 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that patients with the congenital vascular malformation double aortic arch have two aortic arches, instead of one, which form a vascular ring that can compress the trachea?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2009/May.

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In general, I'm happy with this article, and hope that we can get more like it. Parts of this article read like a med school textbook, veering in some instances, particularly in the "Treatment" section, towards a how-to manual instead of an encyclopedia article. Some of this is due to the inclusion of some non-encyclopedic details; for example, the general reader (Wikipedia is written for neither surgeons nor patients) probably doesn't need to know the exact kind of stitch or the recommended suture type. More of it is due to unnecessary reliance on unexplained jargon. For example, the article currently says this:

After retraction of the left lung, the mediastinal pleura above the left arch is incised and the left arch and the ligamentum arteriosum are dissected out and separated from the surrounding structures. The ligamentum is divided and two vascular clamps are placed on the junction of the left arch with the descending aorta.

This is doubtless important information -- if you were writing a manual of surgery -- but the encyclopedic information here could probably be adequately explained in a single, much simpler sentence: "To reach the area to be repaired, the left lung is carefully moved to the side, and several nearby pieces of connective tissue are cut away."

I suggest trying to go through this article again with an eye to simplifying things so that a high school student or the neighbor of a patient could understand at least the first sentence or two of each section. WP:Explain jargon and the medical style manual might be useful guidelines for you. Thanks again for your solid content, and good luck! WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:57, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]