Introduction: Abdominal aortic aneurysm can be repaired by elective procedure while asymptomatic, or immediately when it is complicated--mostly due to rupture. Treating abdominal aneurysm electively, before it becomes urgent, has medical and economical reason. Today, the first month mortality after elective operations of the abdominal aorta aneurysm is less than 3%; on the other hand, significant mortality (25%-70%) has been recorded in patients operated immediately because of rupture of the abdominal aneurysm. In addition, the costs of elective surgical treatment are significantly lower.
Objective: The objective of this study is to compare long-term survival of patients that underwent elective or immediate repair of abdominal aortic aneurysm (due to rupture), and to find out the factors influencing the long-term survival of these patients.
Material and methods: Through retrospective review of prospectively collected data of the Institute for Cardiovascular Diseases of Clinical Center of Serbia, Belgrade, 56 patients that had elective surgery and 35 patients that underwent urgent operation due to rupture of abdominal aneurysm were followed up. Only the patients that survived 30 postoperative days were included in this review, and-were followed up (ranging from 2 to 126 months). Electively operated patients were followed during 58.82 months on the average (range 7 to 122), and urgently operated were followed over 52.26 months (range 2 to 126). There was no significant difference of the length of postoperative follow-up between these two groups.
Results: During this period, out of electively operated and immediately operated patients, 27 and 22 cases died, respectively. There was no significant difference (p>0.05a) of long-term survival between these two groups. Obesity and early postoperative complications significantly decreased long-term survival of both electively and immediately operated patients. Graft infection, ventral hernia, aneurysm of peripheral arteries and other vascular reconstructive procedures were the factors that significantly reduced long-term survival of patients operated immediately due to rupture.
Discussion: This comprehensive study has searched for more factors than others had done before. The applied discriminative analysis numerically evaluated the influence of any risk factor of mortality. These factors were divided in three groups as follows: preoperative, operative and postoperative ones. Preoperative factors were sex, age, diabetes mellitus, arterial hypertension, obesity, COPD, and naturally, the indication for operative treatment of ruptured or non-ruptured abdominal aneurysm. Among all these factors, only obesity significantly reduced long-term survival of electively operated patients. It may be said that immediately operated patients who survived the first 30 postoperative days had quite good long-term survival. Operative factors such as type of operative procedure and vascular graft had no influence on long-term survival of patients in both groups. Postoperative risk factors were early postoperative complications, graft infection, symptomatic cerebrovascular disease, carotid endarterectomy, myocardial revascularization, ventral hernias, "other" non vascular operations, malignancy, mental disorders, peripheral aneurysms and occlusive vascular disease, and other vascular operations either due to aneurysm or peripheral occlusive disease. Early postoperative complications (even graft infection) had no significant effect on long-term survival. Ventral hernias and peripheral aneurysms were factors that significantly decreased long-term survival of patients operated for rupture of the abdominal aneurysm.
Conclusion: It is interesting that endarterectomy, myocardial revascularization or malignancy after repair of the abdominal aneurysm (ruptured or non-ruptured) had no effect on long-term survival.