A permanent focal swelling of the aorta.
Normal diameter of the male infrarenal aorta is 2.1 cm and in the adult female it is 1.9 cm.
Ectasia of the aorta refers to diffuse dilatation of the aorta.
A Swedish study of more than 14,000 cases reviewed the incidence of thoracic aortic disease, both aneurysm and dissection, to be 16.3 per hundred thousand per year for men and 9.1 per hundred thousand per year for women.
Risk factors include: age, smoking, hypertension, diabetes, and Marfan’s syndrome.
More than 1/3 of patients with Marfan’s syndrome may experience aortic dissection.
Small abdominal aortic aneurysms are 3-5.5 cm and large aneurysms are more than 5.5 cm.
Associated with intense sterile fibrosis, often with ureteral obstruction.
Aortic aneurysms are degenerative disorders associated with sudden death due to aortic rupture and aortic dissection.
Mycotic aneurysms are caused by bacterial infection, most commonly Salmonella.
They may involve both he proximal aorta, Stanford Type A, and the distal aorta beyond the aortic arch, Stanford Type B.
A study of patients with abdominal aortic aneurysm, the mortality ranged from 4.2% for elective cases of aneurysm repair, to 16.7% for acute cases, to 55.8% for ruptured cases.