Original ArticlesRuptured abdominal aortic aneurysm: A population-based study☆,☆☆
Section snippets
Material and methods
All patients with ruptured AAA or ruptured aneurysm of the common iliac artery who were inhabitants in the city of Malmö during the period 1971 to 1986 were registered retrospectively.
The city of Malmö in southern Sweden has a stable and well-defined urban population, ranging from 244,000 inhabitants in 1971 to 230,000 in 1986. There is only one hospital for somatic diseases in the city. The proportion of elderly people was higher than in Sweden in general22 and it increased throughout the
Results
There were 215 patients with ruptured AAA (median age 77 years, range 28 to 97) during the 16-year study period, 155 men (median age 73 years, range 28 to 94) and 60 women (median age 83 years, range 59 to 97). The age and sex distribution is illustrated graphically in Fig. 1.
The annual number of ruptured AAAs increased among men (p = 0.007) during the period but not among women (p = 0.35) and the incidence per 100,000
Discussion
Although ruptured AAA would seem to be a fairly obvious cause of death, it is difficult to establish the exact number of patients who actually die of this cause, mainly because of the poor validity of official death statistics.10, 11, 12 The coding systems are often ambiguous and the death certificates are too seldom based on proper postmortem examinations. In this study the results are based on an exceptionally high frequency of postmortem examinations. Some years autopsy was done on as many
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Supported by grants from the Swedish Foundation Against Heart and Chest Diseases and from the Swedish Medical Research Council (No. 00759).
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Reprint requests: Henrik Bengtsson, MD, Department of Surgery, Malmö General Hospital, S-214-01 Malmö, Sweden.