David C. Brewster

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a decision-making in regard to elective repair of abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAA) requires careful assessment of factors that influence rupture risk, operative mortality, and life expectancy.

TL;DR: Preoperative dipyridamole-thallium imaging appears most useful to stratify vascular patients determined to be at intermediate risk by clinical evaluation, and the multivariate model using both clinical and thallium variables showed significantly higher specificity at equivalent sensitivity levels than models using either clinical or thallum variables alone.

TL;DR: It is suggested that patients without thallium redistribution are at a low risk for postoperative ischemic events and may proceed to have vascular surgery and should be considered for preoperative coronary angiography and myocardial revascularization in an effort to avoid postoperativeMyocardial ischemia and to improve survival.

TL;DR: Recommendations for evaluating the patient, including risk of aneurysm rupture and associated medical co-morbidities, guidelines for selecting surgical or endovascular intervention, intraoperative strategies, perioperative care, long-term follow-up, and treatment of late complications are provided.

TL;DR: A review of 24,000 consecutive autopsies during a 23-year period from 1952 through 1975 at the Massachusetts General Hospital revealed 473 patients died with surgically intact arteriosclerotic abdominal aortic aneurysms.