We discussed aortic aneurysms in last week’s blog and this week we’ll talk about what we do to prevent their rupture. First, we have to know that the aneurysm is there. Widespread screening of aneurysms is not recommended, so it is usually the case that these are discovered by chance. For instance, a person may have nausea and abdominal pain…
We’ve spent the last several weeks discussing valvular heart disease. Today I’ll turn our attention to a problem outside the heart—aortic aneurysms. An aneurysm is a focal enlargement or bulging of a blood vessel. It comes from the Greek word meaning “dilation.” In fact, radiology reports will often use the term “dilated” to refer to a vessel that is larger…