title: Complete ten-year follow-up after endovascular abdominal aortic aneurysm repair: survival and causes of death.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To analyze the hazard and causes of death after endovascular aneurysm repair (EVAR) of abdominal aortic aneurysms during a complete ten year follow-up.
  
  
  METHODS
  This is a retrospective clinical study of 130 consecutive patients undergoing EVAR between 1995 and 1998. One-hundred twenty-one patients (93.1%) were treated with first-generation stentgrafts and nine patients (6.9%) received second-generation devices. All patients completed a follow-up of at least 10 years, unless death occurred before then. Time and causes of death were provided by the Austrian central register of deaths.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The median follow-up was 7.6 years, and the 130 patients had 968.5 person-years of follow-up. The ten-year mortality rate was 62.3%. Cardiovascular events were the most frequent causes of death, with a 3.9 incidence rate per 100 person-years. Cancer death and death due to other causes occurred in 2.1 and 1.8 cases per 100 person-years, respectively. Lethal late aneurysm rupture happened in 4.6% (n=6), which corresponds to an annual incidence rate of 0.6 per 100 person-years. All of those patients had been treated with first-generation devices.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Cardiovascular events were the most frequent cause of death after EVAR, followed by malignancy and other diseases. The risk of dying from secondary rupture was clearly lower than that of death due to other reasons during ten years after EVAR, even in patients with first-generation stentgrafts.
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, Division of Cardiovascular and Interventional Radiology, Medical University of Vienna, Waehringer Guertel 18-20, A-1090 Vienna, Austria. andreas.wibmer@meduniwien.ac.at
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Wibmer
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Nolz
authors.forename: Harald
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Teufelsbauer
authors.forename: Georg
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Kretschmer
authors.forename: Alexander M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Prusa
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Funovics
authors.forename: Johannes
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lammer
authors.forename: Maria
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Schoder
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D017544:Aortic Aneurysm, Abdominal / Q000401:mortality* / Q000601:surgery*; D002423:Cause of Death; D057510:Endovascular Procedures / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D016018:Least-Squares Analysis; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012042:Registries; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D015607:Stents; D015996:Survival Rate