Equivocal usefulness of FDG for the noninvasive imaging of abdominal aortic aneurysms

Excerpt

Abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAA) usually progress asymptomatically and are undetected until rupture occurs. Once ruptured, the mortality rate of AAA is about 80 %. Among all patients with ruptured AAA, about one-third die without reaching hospital, and about another quarter reach hospital but die prior to surgical intervention. Among the remaining patients (about 40 %) surviving AAA rupture long enough to benefit from surgical intervention, the perioperative mortality has historically reached about 50 % [1], a value that has however recently decreased owing to the introduction of endovascular repair [2]. On the other hand, elective AAA repair has a much lower in-hospital mortality rate, with recently reported values of 1.3 % and 4.7 % for endovascular and open surgical repair, respectively [3], thereby strongly emphasizing the need for screening and identification of those patients with prone-to-rupture AAA. …