Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm Screening Practices: Impact of the 2014 U.S. Preventive Services Task Force Recommendations

Abdominal aortic aneurysm screening: concepts and controversies

“…However, in one recent retrospective study of AAA screening utilization a large tertiary academic medical center with an integrated health network, the 15-month period after the publication of the revised guidelines compared to the period before was associated with an increase in the proportion of exams performed in the elderly male ever-smoker population (most appropriate screening group). On the other hand, screening rates in other demographic groups did not significantly change (12).…”

Updates on AAA screening and surveillance

“…confidence intervals [CI] of 0.001, 0.011) with one preventable death for each 169 (89-1811) men invited to participate. 9 The justification for screening programs has been further revisited by the publication of a 2017 meta-analysis 10,11 of all reported trials, which concluded that screening reduces AAA-related deaths (odds ratio [OR] 0.66, 95% CI: 0.47, 0.93, P <0.02). A reduction in overall mortality in the invited men was also shown (hazard ratio [HR] 0.98, 95% CI: 0.96, 0.99, P = 0.003).…”

Cell proliferation detected using [18F]FLT PET/CT as an early marker of abdominal aortic aneurysm

“…Following the PET scan, a CT image was acquired for anatomic coregistration (40 kV, 140 lA, 360 projections, 8 shots). PET images were histogrammed into 15 2-seconds, 2 15-seconds, 4 60-seconds, 1 300-seconds, and 8 600seconds frames and reconstructed using the threedimensional ordered subsets expectation maximization algorithm with 2 iterations and 16 subsets with attenuation correction, yielding voxel dimensions of 0.39 9 0.39 9 0.78 mm 3 .…”

“…For saline controls, the aortic ROI was constructed between the kidneys, superior to the bladder, and anterior to the anterior border of the vertebral column based on the CT images. These ROIs had dimensions of 1.08 mm 3 and contained 15 voxels (see Supplementary Figure 1 for example visual representation of ROIs). Incorporating mouse weights and injected radioactivity doses, the output statistics revealed the maximum and mean standardized uptake values (SUVs-) across all frames.…”