What are the ways to treat abdominal aortic aneurysms?

There are two primary ways to treat abdominal aortic aneurysms, one is open surgery and one is endovascular surgery. Endovascular surgery has been developed in the last 20 years and is minimally invasive. The operation is performed through two small holes in the groin and a stent is placed up into the aorta and frequently patients can then go home home the next day following surgery. Open surgery in contrast is a more invasive operation usually performed through a long incision in the abdomen. Patients will be in intensive care for two or three days and normally go home on about day seven, perhaps day five if they're very fit or day ten if it's a difficult operation or they're not so fit. So certainly in the short term the risk of death or complications is relatively higher than with endovascular repair and even up to three months following opening aortic surgery patients often feel low in energy and can still not be back to their normal cells. The main pitfall of endovascular repair is the need for surveillance and re-intervention. So most patients will have a scan of some sort at three months, six months, a year and then yearly. According to some trials which are relatively old now, patients who have an EVAR are at risk as time goes on of a failure of the stent graft and a need for a re-operation. Often these operations can be minor interventions performed under local anaesthetic but sometimes they are major operations even taking the whole sent graft out and having to perform an open repair later. So the chief advantage of open surgery is that it's more durable than endovascular repair. The chief advantage of endovascular repair is that you can get back to your normal life more quickly.