Screening for Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm Using a Portable Transthoracic Echocardiography Among Patients With Acute Coronary Syndrome

The prevalence of Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm among 65 years old individuals worldwide is 1-2%. when diagnosis is confirmed by abdominal Ultrasound the prevalence is 5.5% in men and 1% in women. As abdominal aortic aneurysm and coronary heart disease share common risk factors, patients with acute coronary syndrome represent a high risk population in which screening for another atherosclerotic site is recommended. Patients admitted for ACS undergo routinely TTE. during the same study, TTE may offer the opportunity to evaluate the cardiac morphology and function and to screen for Abdominal Aortic aneurysm. It was reported by different studies that the Sensitivity of this technique was between 91-96% for AAA screening. In addition, this method is cheap, available and requires only 2-3 minutes to be added to the standard TTE. we plan to examine patients admitted with ACS in our Intensive Care Unit for screening AAA by TTE in subcostal views in addition to the standard TTE examination.