Casual diagnosis of abdominal aorta aneurysm during transthoracic echocardiographic test: Clinical case and literature review

Abdominal aorta aneurysm (AAA) is a silent pathology and, almost always, runs in a hidden way to the casual diagnosis or to the clinical manifestation of serious complications such as arterial rupture or peripheral embolization. It's therefore basic to use screening methods assuring high rate of preventive diagnosis. At the present time the most part of the abdominal aorta aneurysms is casually diagnosed during abdominal echography, only rarely for a specific clinical suspect. Rapidly evaluating the abdominal aorta (AA) diameters during the transthoracic echocardiographic test could represent, with a minimum increase of the test length, an efficacious screening of this disease. We are showing here a typical clinical case of casual diagnosis of AAA during an echocardiographic test on a patient with many risk factors. © 2005 Pharma Project Group srl.