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Julia Holmgren

Socioeconomic Status and… Ruptured Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm?

Paras Shah - Department of Vascular Surgery



A widespread movement has started, especially within the field of vascular surgery research, to correlate various outcomes and patient presentations with socioeconomic status. This article is a function of that movement, along with a push to revise United States Prevention Task Force (USPTF) screening efforts for abdominal aortic aneurysms, correlating the frequency of ruptured Abdominal Aortic Aneurysms (rAAA) with socioeconomic status. To accomplish this mission, the Vascular Quality Initiative Registry was used, which contains data from 2010-2019 from healthcare centers across the globe. Using regions with an Area of Deprivation Index (ADI) of 5, the highest quintile that shows the most impoverished regions, the search yielded interesting results.


14% of the patients in the query were placed in the highest ADI quintile, representing the most deprived socioeconomic regions. Overall, around 8.2% of patients suffered from a rAAA. Patients living in the most deprived socioeconomic regions had almost a 1.5-fold increase in odds of presenting with an rAAA (Odds Ratio (OR) = 1.46). People living in urban residences also saw decreased presentations of an rAAA compared with rural residents (OR=.84). In an age-related analysis, there was a significant finding among patients under 65 years old. Of the 14,117 patients in the query that were under 65 years of age, 1381 (9.8%) patients experienced a rAAA. 9955 (71%) of these patients resided in the three most deprived quintiles. In this subgroup (patients under 65), residence in the most socioeconomically deprived region was associated with increased odds of presenting with an rAAA compared to the least deprived region (OR=1.31)


The importance of this research is to highlight the continual health disparities that people in socioeconomically deprived regions are put through. With a newfound understanding of rAAA presentation and socioeconomic deprivation, early screenings for rAAA can be created for at-risk populations.


References:

Wu, V. S., Caputo F. J., Quatromoni, J. G., Kirksey L., Lyden S. P., Rowse, J. W. (2023). Association between socioeconomic deprivation and presentation with a ... Society for Vascular Surgery. https://www.jvascsurg.org/article/S0741-5214(23)01941-9/fulltext


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