[Infrarenal aortic aneurysms. 2. Occurrence, diagnosis and treatment]

Infrarenal aortic aneurysms exhibit multifactorial inheritance with massive familial occurrence. Several large screening programmes have shown a general prevalence of about 3% in nonselected populations of patients over 60 years. Danish data on this point are not available, but is seems reasonable to suspect that 30,000-40,000 Danes have the disease. Only 450 operations for infrarenal aortic aneurysms are performed each year in Denmark (population 5.1 mill.). The current information with respect to incidence, prevalence, expansion rate, therapeutical strategies and results of vascular surgical reconstruction is reviewed.