🫀 A meta-analysis of 56 studies put the pooled prevalence of abdominal aortic aneurysm in the general population at 4.8%. Almost all of it…

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🫀 A meta-analysis of 56 studies put the pooled prevalence of abdominal aortic aneurysm in the general population at 4.8%. Almost all of it is #asymptomatic until rupture. 🚬 The dominant driver is #smoking. A 2025 meta-analysis pooling 34,551 aneurysm cases found an odds ratio of 3.39 for current or ever smokers. Male sex came in at 3.78. Nothing else on the list comes close. 👨‍👩‍👦 #Family #history is the quiet one, at an odds ratio of 2.26. That puts it ahead of every cardiovascular comorbidity measured in the same analysis, including renal disease at 1.91, coronary artery disease at 1.81 and peripheral vascular disease at 1.67. If a parent or sibling had an aneurysm, that matters more than most people assume. ⚖️ Then the results that cut against intuition. #Hypertension and #dyslipidaemia are real but modest, at 1.31 and 1.33. Diabetes came out protective at 0.84. And in that pooled analysis, advanced age, alcohol intake, being overweight and physical activity showed no significant association at all, which is a useful corrective to the standard lifestyle narrative around this disease. 🔬 Risk is also not distributed evenly by sex (see our last Fact-Friday Post). A 2025 analysis found the relative risk of AAA for current versus never smokers was 4.83 in men but 8.44 in women, a pooled risk ratio of 1.78 between the sexes. 🔍 The practical implication is uncomfortable. The bulk of aneurysm risk sits in a group that can be identified with a smoking history, a family history and one ultrasound. We build devices for the patients who get found. Finding more of them is the larger prize. #AorticAneurysm #RiskFactors #Smoking #Prevention #Screening #EarlyDetection #Epidemiology #SexDifferences #Cardiovascular #PublicHealth #MedTech #Aortex