The One-Stop Aortic Surveillance Clinic

BACKGROUND: The principle of interval ultrasound surveillance of small abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAA) is well established. The fundamental principle of surveillance is that repair of AAA is a serious undertaking and the risk of the operation outweighs the risk of rupture in aneurysms less than 5.5 cm. Surveillance is well established but requires multiple visits to both the surgical clinic and the ultrasound department. REPORT: This report presents a system whereby the vascular surgeon is trained in the process of aortic sonography with a view to one-stop clinic assessment. After training of the main investigators in aortic sonography, the surgeons performed scans on the aortas of 80 consecutive patients and compared the scan result with the subsequent formal scan. DISCUSSION: Surgical and radiographer scans correlate very closely. It is believed that the one-stop aortic surveillance model is safe, accurate, and improves both the patient journey and clinic throughput.