Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm, including details on aaa (abdominal aortic aneurism), cardiac disease, treatment, symptoms, surgery.

Patient fitness and survival after abdominal aortic aneurysm repair in patients from the UK EVAR trials.

Brown LC, Greenhalgh RM, Howell S, Powell JT, Thompson SG

Vascular Surgery Research Group, Imperial College, London, UK. louise.brown@imperial.ac.uk

BACKGROUND: The aim was to use a validated fitness score to determine whether fitter patients with a large abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) benefited from having open rather than endovascular repair. METHODS: The Customized Probability Index (CPI) was applied to patients in the Endovascular Aneurysm Repair (EVAR) I and II trials. Interaction tests between CPI and randomized group assessed the effect of fitness and type of AAA repair on elective 30-day mortality and 4-year survival. RESULTS: The mean(s.d.) CPI scores were 3.6(9.3) for 1252 EVAR I patients and 10.0(11.3) for 404 EVAR II patients (range - 25 to + 43) (P < 0.001). The fitness of EVAR I patients was classified as good (579 patients, mean CPI - 4.2), moderate (331 patients, mean CPI 5.7) or poor (338 patients, mean CPI 15.1). Only in the good fitness group did 30-day mortality convincingly favour endovascular repair (odds ratio 0.24, P = 0.030), but overall the test of interaction was not significant (P = 0.363). For 4-year all-cause and aneurysm-related mortality, there was no benefit for either treatment across all fitness scores (P = 0.281 and P = 0.371 respectively). CONCLUSION: The benefit of endovascular repair was most convincing in the fittest patients. There was no evidence that the fittest patients benefited more from open surgery.

Published 28 May 2007 in Br J Surg, 94(6): 709-16.
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