Aortic Top 10 Priorities (priority setting in association with the JLA)
A workshop was held on 13th April 2021 to bring together patients and healthcare professionals to jointly agree a priority list for vascular aortic research. The results were as follows:
- What is the optimal management of patients with aortic aneurysm disease using individualised risk benefit ratios?
- What causes aneurysms to grow and/or rupture?
- Can we develop a test that could diagnose patients at risk of aortic aneurysm/dissection?
- How do surgeons decide which treatment is best for aneurysms and are these decisions based on the latest evidence available?
- What is the optimum medical therapy for patients with AAA to minimise expansion / rupture?
- What causes an aneurysm or is associated with aneurysm formation and how can we prevent one developing?
- What is the best way to monitor people after treatments to repair aneurysms to make sure they don't develop problems with their repair?
- How do we make aneurysm surgery safer and reduce the risk of complications?
- How do we reduce the time it takes to recover from aortic operations?
- Should siblings be screened for AAA when there is a family history of aneurysm?
The following questions were also discussed and put in order of priority at the workshop:
- What methods, including digital technology, can be used to ensure that people with acute aortic conditions such as aneurysm rupture or dissection are diagnosed quickly and treated without delay?
- Aneurysms behave differently in women compared to men but both men and women are treated the same way. Should we develop sex-specific pathways to care for people with aneurysms?
- When should people with aneurysms be offered an operation to repair their aneurysm and how quickly should this be done if this is required?
- How can the risk of another aneurysm or other long term aortic complications after aneurysm repair be minimised?
- What is the best treatment option for "complex" AAA (e.g. those not suitable for standard stent grafts or low risk standard operations – eg short neck, iliac pathologies, juxtarenal)
- What is the rate of aneurysm growth or aortic growth after dissection?
- Can keyhole techniques and robotics make operations to repair aneurysms safer?
- Does having an aneurysm affect life expectancy, how can any effect of having an aneurysm be minimised and how can the patient and doctor achieve this?