[The surgical treatment on thoracic and abdominal aortic aneurysm in elderly patients over age of 70 years].

For the last 5 years from 1986 to the end of 1990, 279 and 271 surgeries were undertaken on thoracic and abdominal aortic aneurysm, respectively. The highest age distribution of the former was between 60 to 69 years old comparing to 70 to 71 years old of later group. In thoracic aortic aneurysm, overall surgical results were inferior to elderly patients, however, this poor result was mainly attributed to the surgery for ruptured-emergency cases. In eliminating these situation, mortality of elderly in elective surgery was found to be equivalent to those of patients age of less than 69 years old. The same findings were also apparent for the surgery on abdominal aortic aneurysm where the mortality was totally the same (2.3% vs 2.4%) in elective surgery but high in ruptured cases (82% vs 30%). The long term survival rates were analysed in both groups in elderly patients. It was found the survival curve in thoracic aneurysm patients was lower especially for the first 5 years following surgery comparing to that of abdominal patients, however, because of relatively small number of patients listed in this late follow up, precise result has to be waited for the future analysis.