Aneurysms of the Abdominal Aorta.

AN ANEURYSM of the aorta irrespective of its location or its etiology is a serious threat to the patient due to its tendency to enlarge and to the fact that serious complications from rupture, dissection, pressure effects or peripheral embolization from a mural thrombus threaten the life of its victim. The frequency of death from complications has long been known, and Colt in 1927 collected a series of 503 patients with thoracic aortic aneurysms and 121 patients with aneurysms of the abdominal aorta and demonstrated that the average survival of these patients was less than two years from the time of first diagnosis. Similarly, Wright (1956) made a study of 60 patients with abdominal aneurysms and found that only 400/, survived two years from the time of diagnosis whilst all the patients had died within seven years. In a review of 101 cases by Estes (1950), 50%/, were dead after three years. The rapid development of vascular surgery, now permits the resection of an uncomplicated abdominal aortic aneurysm and replacement by graft with a fair degree of safety for the patient. Since the first successful performance of this procedure by Dubost in 1951, the work of DeBakey (1953), Robb (1953), Boyd (1957), and others have helped to standardize the surgical technique as well as to demonstrate the superiority of vascular prostheses over aortic homographs. (Edwards, 1959).