Surgical workload as a consequence of screening for abdominal aortic aneurysm.

Abstract

A study was performed to evaluate the surgical workload that has resulted from screening an at-risk population for abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) and to forecast the likely workload from an established screening programme. Over an 8-year period 8944 people aged 65-80 years were screened; 356 were found to have an AAA of 3 cm or greater in diameter. There were 288 outpatient consultations involving 171 patients, and 43 patients (4.8 per 1000 screened) had surgery during the study period. A fully operational screening programme for a population of 250,000, screening men and women at a rate of 2000 per year, would be expected to produce a surgical workload of nine or ten operations for AAA per year. Screening men only would increase this to 34 annually.