Doctor on a quest for prevention
HAVE you ever inflated a balloon with so much air, causing it to suddenly burst?
What if I told you that something similar could happen to the blood vessels in our body?
Abdominal aortic aneurysm, also known as an AAA, is a balloon-like enlargement of the main blood vessel that supplies blood and nutrients to the vital organs in our body.
As an AAA grows larger, the risk of it suddenly rupturing increases, resulting in lifethreatening bleeding within the abdomen – often without warning.
AAA rupture is responsible for approximately 200,000 deaths worldwide per year.
The only treatment we have for this condition is surgical repair.
However, 75 per cent of patients that undergo an emergency operation for a ruptured AAA do not survive.
The risk of an AAA rupture is currently assessed by measuring the diameter of the enlarged portion of the blood vessel.
As the AAA grows larger in size or its diameter, so does the likelihood of it rupturing.
Therefore, this measurement is currently used by clinicians to guide them in deciding which AAAS require surgical repair.
Unfortunately, some small
AAAS do rupture before reaching the current threshold for repair, while some large AAAS remain stable throughout a patient’s lifetime.
This suggests that measuring diameter alone is not a perfect tool in deciding, which AAAS will require surgical intervention.
My research is investigating whether an engineering technique called “Finite Element Analysis” can be used to predict the risk of AAA rupture.
This method was developed to help engineers find weak spots or areas of high wall stress in their three dimensional designs.
Applying this technology to the CT scans of AAA patients may potentially help us identify which cases are more likely to rupture.
In our recently published findings, we found that individuals with a high wall stress were more likely to have a
AAA RUPTURE IS RESPONSIBLE FOR APPROXIMATELY 200,000 DEATHS WORLDWIDE PER YEAR
ruptured AAA independent of the diameter. We will now apply this technique to a much larger group of patients, to investigate whether individuals with higher wall stress have faster growing AAAS and an increased risk of rupture during follow up.
It is hoped that this measure may help us more effectively identify individuals who will benefit from AAA surgery and improve the outcomes for our patients.
A MAN is fighting for life after a shocking knife fight erupted at a home in the NSW Hunter region on Friday morning.
Emergency crews were called to a house on Shalistan Street, Cliftleigh, near Cessnock, just before 2am.
A 23-year-old man was found with stab wounds to his head and chest.
He was taken to
John
Hunter Hospital in a stable condition.
A second man, 27, had already fled the scene but turned up at Maitland Hospital a short time later. He was suffering stab wounds to the chest and neck. The man was later rushed to John Hunter Hospital. He remained in a critical condition.
An investigation is under way.