Morphology of the Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm

Dissertation Abstract Abdominalaortic aneurysm (AAA) is a serious disease. Its prevalence is in the developed countries about 3%. As an aneurysm is considered a dilatation of all layers of a vessel wall over 3 cm. Majority of AAA are small and asymptomatic, and although the risk of rupture increases with the size of aneurysm sack, even the small aneurysms rupture. The rupture mortaliry ranges about 70 %. Surgical treatment is indicated in the asymptomatic patients in diameter of AAA over 5 cm. The average speed of growth of AAA is 0.3 cm per year, e.g. in the early diagnosed patients there is a several years interval for a pharmacolocical influencing of the progression of this disease. Knowledge of pathogenesis is essential for any targeted pharmacological treatment. Our prospective, non-randomised studies are based on the application of the stereological methods for the histopathological assessment of the AAA samples. The acquired data enable the statistical analysis, including the null hypothesis testing. In our study analyzing the histopathology of AAA aortae of 65 patients (65 walls and 55 thrombi) and 6 normal abdominal aortae from the organ donors we assessed the following parameters: the area fractions of collagen and elastin, and the length density of elastin in intima and media, the area..