Madhavan L. Raghavan

TL;DR: For AAAs under observation, peak AAA wall stress seems superior to diameter in differentiating patients who will experience catastrophic outcome, and with proportional hazards analysis, peak wall stress and gender were the only significant independent predictors of rupture.

TL;DR: Finite element simulations showed that the computed AAA wall stresses changed by only 4% or less when both the parameters were varied within the 95% confidence intervals for the patient population studied, indicating that in lieu of the patient-specific material parameters, which are difficult to determine, the model to be reasonably employed in a clinical setting is sufficiently accurate.

TL;DR: Calculation of wall stress with computer modeling of three-dimensional AAA geometry appears to assess rupture risk more accurately than AAA diameter or other previously proposed clinical indices.

TL;DR: Computer models showed that the stress within the wall of an abdominal aortic aneurysm and possibly the potential for rupture are as dependent on aneurYSm shape as they are on maximum diameter.

TL;DR: A methodology to noninvasively estimate the in vivo wall stress distribution for actual AAAs on a patient-to-patient basis is developed and may allow for the evaluation of an individual AAA's rupture risk on a more biophysically sound basis than the widely used 5-cm AAA diameter criterion.