Patients Older Than 80 Years Can Reach Their Normal Life Expectancy After Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm Repair: A Comparison Between Endovascular Aneurysm Repair and Open Surgery

Abstract

Purpose: To investigate the long-term outcomes of endovascular aneurysm repair (EVAR) and open surgical repair (OSR) of infrarenal abdominal aortic aneurysm in octogenarian patients and to compare them with the overall expected survival based on a sex- and age-matched German population. Methods: A total of 177 patients (median age 82 years; 149 men) ≥80 years old (range 80–92) who underwent primary elective repair of an infrarenal aortic aneurysm (≥5 cm) between 1998 and 2015 were identified in a database search. Two groups of patients were formed based on the type of procedure: 131 EVAR patients (median age 83 years; 114 men) and 46 OSR patients (median age 82 years; 35 men). Results: The median follow-up was 5 years for the OSR group and 4.5 years for the EVAR group. Kaplan-Meier analysis showed no significant difference in survival between the EVAR and OSR groups at 78 months. The observed survival of all study patients was not statistically different from the expected survival of a sex- and age-matched German population, which was true separately for women and men. Conclusion: The patients in this study seemed to reach normal life expectancy in comparison to the age- and sex-matched general population with a similar cumulative survival in both study groups over 5 years of follow-up.