Abdominal aortic aneurysm repair in cardiac high risk patients--medication, surgery or stent?

With increasing age of the general population, a higher awareness of the disease, better screening methods and the option of less invasive therapeutical strategies, the incidence of abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAA) is rising steadily. Since AAA is a disease of the elderly patient with generalized atherosclerosis, there is a high coincidence with other vascular morbidities. Especially the presence of coronary artery disease and concomitant left ventricular dysfunction proves many of those patients to be cardiac high risk patients with respect to an operative approach. On the other hand, a high coincidence of severe peripheral arterial occlusive disease might hamper the endovascular approach and endovascular therapy might carry a high risk for these patients as well. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to consider how and when cardiac high risk patients with AAA should be treated. In this review therefore special aspects such as the choice of medical treatment, the need of preoperative coronary revascularization and the situation in old patients are discussed in detail.