Annals of Vascular Surgery
Volume 23, Issue 2 , Pages 153-158, March 2009

Predictors of Survival Following Open and Endovascular Repair of Abdominal Aortic Aneurysms

  • Jon S. Matsumura

      Affiliations

    • Department of Surgery, Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, Illinois
    • Corresponding Author InformationCorrespondence to: Jon S. Matsumura, MD, Department of Surgery, Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine, 201 E. Huron, Suite 10-105, Chicago, IL 60611
    • ,
  • Barry T. Katzen

      Affiliations

    • Chief Medical Officer Baptist Cardiac and Vascular Institute, Miami, Florida
    • ,
  • Timothy M. Sullivan

      Affiliations

    • Chairman, Vascular Endovascular Surgery, Manneapolis Heart Institute, Minneapolis, Minnesota, South Dakota
    • ,
  • Michael D. Dake

      Affiliations

    • Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Stanfod University Stanford, CA University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia
    • ,
  • David C. Naftel

      Affiliations

    • Department of Surgery University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama
    • ,
  • Excluder Bifurcated Endoprosthesis Investigators

published online 09 September 2008.

Article Outline

Clinical decision making for asymptomatic abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAAs) weighs risk of aneurysm rupture, treatment hazards, and overall survival expectations. AAA diameter is the primary parameter in assessing rupture risk. Perioperative risk assessment has been extensively studied, and in-hospital mortality has been reduced to less than 8% with higher-risk open repair and less than 3% with endovascular repair. The purpose of this report is to determine risk factors that predict 2-year survival following open and endovascular AAA repair. We studied 334 patients enrolled in a multicenter clinical trial evaluating an endovascular graft in comparison to standard open repair of infrarenal AAA. Demographic, medical history, physical examination, laboratory, anatomic, procedural, and standardized risk score system variables were analyzed in a multivariable Cox proportional hazard model. Overall survival was 89% at 2 years. Heart disease, cancer, and stroke were the most common causes of death, and no deaths were due to AAA rupture. Cox modeling demonstrated that there were several independent predictors for death after AAA repair: smaller body mass index (p = 0.005), Society for Vascular Surgery pulmonary risk score ≥1 (p = 0.005), history of erectile dysfunction (p = 0.008), history of heart valve replacement (p = 0.008), lower preoperative platelet count (p = 0.012), larger ratio of AAA diameter/proximal neck diameter (p = 0.020), and lower ankle-brachial index (p = 0.031). Age, gender, and open or endovascular treatment group are not significant independent risk factors for 2-year mortality in this study. Clinical, laboratory, and anatomic factors predict survival after open and endovascular repair of AAAs. With progressive reduction of in-hospital mortality, assessment of patient longevity after AAA repair has become a more important factor in clinical decision making. Use of valid predictors of patient survival will optimize resource utilization and improve overall patient outcomes. Better selection of patients for any method of repair may improve overall utility more than choice of open or endovascular techniques.

 

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Introduction 

Abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAAs) are commonly diagnosed in older patients. There is no proven medical treatment, and decision making is limited to three options: watchful waiting, standard open surgical repair and endovascular repair. The latter two options are associated with significant morbidity and mortality, occasional prolonged recovery, and late complications. Because of these limitations, many patients and their physicians choose to defer any intervention. In weighing these options, much is known about the risk of aneurysm rupture; specifically diameter of the AAA and gender have been correlated with rupture.1, 2 Similarly, the 30-day periprocedural mortality hazards of both open and endovascular repair have been well defined. While data exist on predictors of long-term complications and survival after open surgical repair, less information is available on risk factors for late mortality after endovascular repair.3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 For asymptomatic patients with borderline risk of AAA rupture or high risk of interventional treatment, predicting survival becomes a critical element in medical decision making. Patients must expect to live long enough to benefit from a prophylactic repair of the AAA by any technique. For example, EVAR Trial 2 showed that prophylactic repair was not beneficial for survival in a group of asymptomatic “unfit” patients with relatively high perioperative and late mortality.15 The goal of this study is to identify clinical, laboratory, anatomic, or procedural predictors of survival following AAA repair. Application of accurate risk factors could help stratify patients who gain more or less benefit from repair.

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Methods 

Analysis was performed on data from a U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved, multicenter, prospective trial comparing standard open repair of infrarenal AAA to treatment with the Excluder (W. L. Gore & Associates, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA). The study was conducted at 19 U.S. centers, and participating investigators have been previously published.16 Local institutional review boards approved the study, and all subjects provided informed consent for participation. Patients in the open repair group had standard aneurysmorrhaphy with placement of a sutured fabric graft, and endovascular patients had repair with a modular bifurcated endoprosthesis system that is performed by femoral cutdown or percutaneous techniques.17

Over 100 clinical characteristics, laboratory values, standardized risk scoring systems, and detailed anatomic measurements (>40) were systematically recorded on case report forms that were verified against source documents by a contract clinical research organization. Earlier reporting standards were used when applicable, as later reporting standards criteria were not available during the design of this trial.18, 19, 20, 21, 22

Two-year survival was selected for primary analysis because perioperative mortality may approach 8% in high-risk patients, and the annualized risk of rupture is about 5% to 10% for AAAs of 5.5 to 6 cm. For an individual patient with a large aneurysm, surviving at least 3 years after repair is likely to result in an overall benefit after suffering the initial risk of repair. Therefore, more accurate prediction of 2-year survival is a practical point at which better discrimination would be expected to be useful. Further, clinicians frequently use this time horizon in discussions with patients, and entry into these trials is often conditional upon a predicted survival of 2 years.

For this publication, the authors were involved in data acquisition and analysis, had full access to case report forms and reviewed selected source documents, wrote the article, and approved the final manuscript version. The sponsor scanned the paper only for proprietary information, while the authors retained final review authority.

Statistics 

Cox proportional hazard multivariable regression was used for analysis of independent risk factors for survival. Kaplan-Meier curves were used to depict event frequencies over time, and a dotted line indicates the standard error is over 10%. Stratified actuarials were constructed in similar fashion based on univariable analysis. Comparisons of Kaplan-Meier curves were done with the log-rank test.

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Results 

A total of 334 patients were enrolled in the pivotal trial; 99 subjects had open repair and 235 patients had endovascular repair. Survival curves for the two groups are depicted in Figure 1. As previously reported, there is no significant difference by log-rank (p = 0.13). Further, when forced into the Cox model, treatment group was not a statistically significant independent predictor of mortality (hazard ratio 1.448, 95% CL 0.625-3.354, p = 0.388).16 Most deaths were due to cardiac disease (Table 1), and none were related to device or graft failure or aneurysm rupture.

Table 1. Causes of death
CauseFirst year (N = 22)Second year (N = 18)
Cardiovascular97
Myocardial infarction23
Stroke32
Congestive heart failure21
Other cardiac21
Aneurysm rupture00
Cancer48
Lung15
Gastrointestinal32
Prostate 1
Miscellaneous93
Pneumonia21
Liver failure11
Urosepsis2
Motor vehicle accident1
Pulmonary fibrosis1
Ischemic bowel1
Gunshot1
Anaphylactic reaction 1

The multivariable analysis demonstrated several independent risk factors for death.(Table 2). They are smaller body mass index (p = 0.005), Society for Vascular Surgery (SVS) pulmonary risk score ≥1 (p = 0.005), history of erectile dysfunction (p = 0.008), history of heart valve replacement (p = 0.008), lower preoperative platelet count (p = 0.012), larger ratio of AAA diameter/proximal neck diameter (p = 0.020), and lower ankle-brachial index (p = 0.031).

Table 2. Cox multivariable model of late mortality
Risk factorHazard ratio [95% CL]p-Value
Smaller body mass index0.288 [0.121-0.689]0.005
SVS pulmonary risk score ≥12.573 [1.327-4.988]0.005
History of erectile dysfunction2.842 [1.314-6.148]0.008
History of heart valve replacement4.260 [1.451-12.509]0.008
Platelet count (103/mm3) (lower)0.992 [0.986-0.998]0.012
AAA diameter/proximal neck diameter (mm)1.031 [1.005-1.059]0.020
Ankle brachial index (lower)0.092 [0.010-0.804]0.031
Endovascular group1.448 [0.625-3.354]0.388

Figure 2 is a Kaplan-Meier stratified actuarial that demonstrates the predictive value of pretreatment erectile dysfunction in this model. There is a 15% survival difference at 16 months between male patients with and without preoperative erectile dysfunction. Women's survival is equivalent to men's without erectile dysfunction. Figure 3 shows a similarly strong predictive value of body mass index. Figure 4 illustrates the predictive value of SVS pulmonary risk score.

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Discussion 

Prophylactic treatment of asymptomatic diseases should be performed only when the benefits to an individual outweigh the risks.23 While the hazards of acute complications and mortality have been well defined for interventional therapy of AAAs, the risks of rupture are cumulative depending on the annual risk of rupture and the expected survival of the patient.24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32 This study attempts to identify predictors of survival so that the cumulative annual risk of rupture can be more accurately estimated for an individual.

Several factors that predict poor survival were identified in this trial. When comparing these to the literature, some factors are previously known to be associated with late death in studies after open surgical repair. The Association for Academic Research in Vascular Surgery found overall survival of 67% at 5 years in 794 patients who survived open repair in 1989, and Cox modeling showed that death was associated with larger diameter of aneurysm, left ventricular failure, older age, carotid artery occlusion, choice of surgical incision, cardiac arrhythmia, duration of aortic clamp, myocardial ischemia, abnormality at the upper limit of the aneurysm, and advanced renal insufficiency.10 In a study of 1135 asymptomatic elective infrarenal open repair cases from 1989 to 1998 from the Cleveland Clinic, survival was 75% at 5 years and 49% at 10 years. Cardiac events and cancer were the primary causes of death in 43% of the patients. Age over 75 years, congestive heart failure, chronic pulmonary disease, renal insufficiency, and configuration of the replacement graft were associated with worse late survival in their Cox model.7

The presence of erectile dysfunction was found to be a strong independent predictor of poor survival in men in this study. This risk factor may have been useful because it includes subjective self-assessment of the patient's health, unlike other variables that are objectively measured or rated. The value of this risk factor has been identified by others. Impotence has been strongly linked to future risk of angina, myocardial infarction, and stroke in a recent study of 8,063 men without pre-existing heart disease.33

The present study has several features that are collectively different from previous publications: 1) it included patients undergoing endovascular repair, 2) detailed anatomic measurements of aortoiliac morphology were analyzed, 3) multiple risk scoring systems were prospectively rated, 4) functional characteristics such as erectile dysfunction were analyzed in addition to commonly collected clinical attributes, and 5) there was third party auditing with cross-examination to source medical documentation, which is expected to be more complete and accurate than registry data.

It is important to note that data from a clinical trial that evaluated the safety and effectiveness of a medical device have some limitations in application to all patients with AAA. The most important limitation is that there were eligibility criteria for this trial that excluded patients with serum creatinine greater than 2.5 mg/dL, ruptured aneurysms, aneurysms that were anatomically unsuitable by prespecified criteria, and known limited life expectancy of less than 2 years. Another limitation is there was no standardized protocol for medical management of chronic comorbidities. This is important given the long-term survival advantage of early repair of small aneurysms versus watchful waiting in the United Kingdom Small Aneurysm Trial.34 Given only 6% of patient mortality was due to unrepaired ruptured AAA, the United Kingdom Trialists hypothesized that smoking cessation and other lifestyle changes may have been responsible for long-term survival advantages. Finally, most patients in this study were treated in 1999, and even in the short interval since then, there have been significant advances in medical treatment of diseases attending this patient group. A fatalistic approach of triaging patients with limited life expectancy, based only on the risk factors identified in this study, could become obsolete.

While the academic exercise of predicting survival is possible, translating this to individual patient care is not simple. Clearly, none of these predictive factors is 100% accurate and patient preferences and clinical judgement of other factors must also be factored into clinical decision making. An important hypothesis to test is whether treatment of the identified comorbidities and risk factors will improve long-term survival, and hence improve the utility of prophylactic treatment of an asymptomatic aneurysm.

Debate and controversy have accompanied newer, expensive medical treatments, and endovascular repair of AAAs is no exception.23, 35, 36 Randomized trials have helped elucidate the relative value of endovascular and open repair, and their interpretation remains mixed.37, 38 These large trials compared heterogeneous cohorts of low- and moderate-risk patients, and the current study has identified predictors of absolute survival differences considerably larger than mortality differences between treatment groups. Improved selection of patients for any type of repair may improve overall utility more than selection of open or endovascular techniques.

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Conclusion 

Several demographic, laboratory, and anatomic factors have been identified that predict mortality following open and endovascular repair of AAAs. In this study, smaller body mass, pulmonary disease, erectile dysfunction, previous valve replacement, thrombocytopenia, relatively larger aneurysms, and lower ankle-brachial index were found to predict poorer survival with up to 20% absolute risk differences at 2 years. Treatment group was not an independent predictor. Inclusion of predictors of survival along with perioperative risk assessment and rupture risk assessment will contribute to better clinical decision making and optimization of overall utility.

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References 

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PII: S0890-5096(08)00286-0

doi:10.1016/j.avsg.2008.07.006

Annals of Vascular Surgery
Volume 23, Issue 2 , Pages 153-158, March 2009

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