Abstract

Introduction: Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm (AAA) is one of the most studied aneurysms because of its big incidence in the world’s population. Management options include open surgical repair and endovascular repair. Although open surgery has been considered for years the gold standard for prevention of AAA rupture, the use of endovascular grafts has attracted wide attention over the last decade motivated by its less invasive nature.

Purpose: To compare quality of life between open and endovascular aortic repair of abdominal aneurysms (AAA).

Material: We analyzed 28 references and abstracts from Medline (Pubmed), The Controlled Trials Register (The Cochrane Library) and ISI Web of Knowledge online database and, at the end, five papers were elected for inclusion.

Methods: References related to our query were searched through Medline (Pubmed), The Controlled Trials Register (The Cochrane Library) and ISI Web of Knowledge online database. Abstracts and titles were reviewed. The resulting papers were reviewed and excluded according to exclusion criteria.

Results: In the early postoperative period there is a small yet significantive QoL advantage of EVAR compared to OR. At 2 months and beyond, patients reported a better QoL after OR than after EVAR.

Conclusion: Both treatment modalities were associated with an initial postoperative decline in some SF-36 domains which significantly impaired in the early postoperative period. However, EVAR resulted in lower general scores in the mid-term than OPEN repair, with a quicker return to preoperative scores in selected domains of the SF-36 beyond 6 months.

KEY WORDS:

Abdominal Aortic  Aneurysm;  AAA;  Endovascular Aneurysm Repair; Endovascular Repair; Endoluminal Repair; EVAR; Open Repair; Surgery Repair; Quality of life; Health Care Indicators; Health Survey Questionnaire; SF-36; Systematic Review