Published 28 July 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b3043
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;339:b3043

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Abdominal aortic aneurysm

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

Being a very large study, the randomised groups in the Multicentre Aneurysm Screening Study (MASS) were very well matched at baseline.¹ As shown in table 1 of our paper,² there were 155 aneurysm related deaths in the group invited to screening and 296 in the control group, a halving of the aneurysm related death rate. There were almost equal numbers of deaths from other causes, 10 119 in the invited group and 10 185 in controls, indicating no advantage or disadvantage of screening for other causes of death. The cost effectiveness was estimated assuming no difference between randomised groups in these other causes of death. The average age of all the deaths which occurred in the invited group was the same as that in the control group (74.7 years). There is no "discrepancy" to be explained here, as claimed by McLaren.³

Lewis is rightly concerned about the potential harms as . . . [Full text of this article]

¹ MRC Biostatistics Unit, Institute of Public Health, Cambridge CB2 0SR, ² Scott Research Unit, St Richard’s Hospital, Chichester PO19 4SE

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