Is It Worthwhile To Operate on Patients with Infrarenal Abdominal Aortic Aneurysms in China? A Review of 30 Years’ Experience at Zhongshan Hospital

During the 30 years between 1960 and 1989, 100 patients with atherosclerotic infrarenal abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAA) were admitted into Zhongshan Hospital. Twenty-eight were treated nonsurgically and 72 surgically. The operation was resection of AAA with prosthesis replacement. The operative mortality was 2.78%. Sixty-two surgical patients are in the postoperative follow-up group. The 5-year survival rate is 83.98% ± 1.71%. Eighteen nonsurgical patients are in the follow-up group. Eight of them died directly from ruptured AAA. The nonsurgical 5-year survival rate is 47.74% ± 12.96%. Ten surgical patients died from ruptured anastomotic false aneurysms. This mortality is higher than what has been reported in the English literature. It may relate to the durability of the prostheses that were inserted. Even so, if all postoperative late deaths from ruptured aorta and other causes are taken into consideration, the 5-year survival rate of the surgical group, 77.51% ± 6.21%, is still higher than that of the nonsurgical group. The data in this paper show that the operation for AAA in this hospital is safe and the postoperative long-term results are comparable to what has been reported in the literature.