Abdominal aortic aneurysm events in postmenopausal women

doi:10.1136/bmj.a1894

Published 14 October 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a1894
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a1894

Editorials

Abdominal aortic aneurysm events in postmenopausal women

Smoking remains the main culprit

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Smoking is the dominant risk factor for abdominal aortic aneurysmin both men and women. In the linked cohort study from the women’shealth initiative, Lederle and colleagues assess the potentialrisk factors for clinically relevant abdominal aortic aneurysmin 161 808 postmenopausal women. They show that current smokershave a four times greater risk of abdominal aortic aneurysmevents and all those who have smoked more than 100 cigaretteshave a twofold increase in risk, even if they have given upsmoking.¹

Smoking increases the relative risk of abdominal aortic aneurysmfour times in both men and women, and the risk for ischaemicheart disease or peripheral arterial disease is increased twofold.²Previous studies have associated both early onset of smokingand total duration of smoking with heightened risk of abdominalaortic aneurysm, although in many studies these associationswere based on aortic diameter rather than clinical events. The. . . [Full text of this article]

Janet T Powell, professor¹, Paul E Norman, professor of vascular surgery²

¹ Vascular Surgery Research Group, Imperial College, Charing Cross Campus, London W6 8RP, ² School of Surgery, University of Western Australia, Fremantle Hospital, PO Box 480, Fremantle, WA 6959, Australia

j.powell@imperial.ac.uk

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Abdominal aortic aneurysm events in the women’s health initiative: cohort study: Frank A Lederle, Joseph C Larson, Karen L Margolis, Matthew A Allison, Matthew S Freiberg, Barbara B Cochrane, William F Graettinger, and J David Curb
BMJ 2008 337: a1724. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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