A review of management options for splenic artery aneurysms and pseudoaneurysms

BACKGROUND: A review of the management of splenic artery aneurysms (SAA). There is no general consensus as to when and what type of intervention should be chosen to treat SAAs. The aim of this study is to investigate the types of intervention for SAAs including complication, reintervention, rupture, mortality after intervention of SAA in a review. METHOD: A literature search was performed using “keywords” in Medline and Embase limited to publications from 2008 to 2018. 289 articles were identified during the initial literature search. 143 articles met the eligibility criteria. 83 articles were included in the quantitative synthesis. Descriptive analysis was performed. RESULTS: 576 patients were identified with 588 reported SAAs. The mean ± SD age was 52.6 ± 5.8 years (range 17–85). The mean ± SD size of SAA was 49.9 ± 13.2 mm (range 6–180). Types of intervention reported were endovascular treatment, open surgery, laparoscopic surgery and conservative management. Mortality rate in patients with endovascular treatment was 0.5% compared to 4.9% with open surgery. 3.4% of patients with conservative management were reported to have aneurysms that grew over time and 2.8% patients had further intervention. ANOVA test to compare mortality between open surgery, endovascular treatment and laparoscopic surgery showed there is no difference between mortality between the 3 different interventions as F (2.71) < F crit (3.02) (P = 0.07). CONCLUSION: Endovascular treatment is now the first choice of treatment for SAA, but future studies are required to determine its long-term durability. By introducing a management pathway for SAA, we hope to see an improvement in managing patients. The management algorithm will require further validation through application with careful and complete follow-up of all cases to improve the pathway depending on patient outcome.