Recent studies by E.S. Lee and co-authors add new data to abdominal aortic aneurysm findings.(Report)

According to recent research from the United States, "Screening for abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAA) significantly reduces aneurysm-related death. In January 2007, the Federal government enacted Medicare coverage guideline to screen persons at risk for the presence of an AAA, the Screen for Abdominal Aortic Aneurysms Very Efficiently (SAAAVE) Act."

"The purpose of this study is to evaluate the efficacy and costs of a large scale screening effort for identifying AAAs in patients in clinical practice. A regional veterans affairs mandate for screening for AAA was implemented in February 2007. Data were extracted through the Northern California Veterans Affairs (VA) Service Network to identify veteran males 65-75 years of age who ever smoked at least 100 cigarettes during their lifetime. An AAA was defined as an aortic diameter 3.0 cm or greater. A Decision Support Systems software (LumiData, Minneapolis, Minn) package tracked true costs of conducting a large AAA screening protocol in the Northern California VA Health Care System. A total of 2918 patients (average age, 71 +/- 6 years) were screened for AAA over a 1-year period from February 2007 to February 2008. An AAA was diagnosed in 5.1% (148/2918) of patients. Two hundred ninety patients out of the 2918 (9.9%) were inappropriately screened. The aneurysm distribution was as follows: 83% (123/148) of the aneurysms were 3.0-4.4 cm, 13% (19/148) were ...