Abdominal aortic aneurysms--a national multicentre study.

A prospective, observational, multicentre study has been carried out on 444 consecutive patients with abdominal aortic aneurysms to study the effect of the diffusion of vascular service on treatment results. Two-hundred and seventy-nine patients were admitted for elective surgery (E), 114 patients had a ruptured aneurysm (R), and 51 had impending rupture (IR). Patients with acute symptoms (R + IR) were generally older and had larger aneurysms than the E group. The postoperative mortality was 7.5%, 16.7%, and 63.1% in the E, IR and R group respectively. The study demonstrates that overall treatment results in these high risk patients are inferior to results published from specialised institutions. Consequently, the diffusion of vascular surgical service seems not to have worked to the benefit of our patients although further analysis may modify this conclusion.