Psychosocial consequences after screening of abdominal aortic aneurysm among 65 year old men.

Background: In order to reduce the incidence of abdominal aortic aneurysm rupture and mortality, the Swedish Medical Council has introduced a national abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) screening program that offers ultrasound examination of 65-year-old men. Screening programmes of AAA may confer both benefits and harms. The study aim was to investigate the psychosocial consequences of AAA screening among men with screening-detected AAA as compared to men identified as AAA-negative at screening, using an AAA-specific questionnaire.

Methods: This cross-sectional study investigated the psychosocial consequences of AAA screening measured with a condition-specific questionnaire. This study focused on the Experience of the Diagnosis and the Screening Procedure in terms of Anxiety, Sense of Dejection and Existential Values. One hundred and fifty-eight men with AAA (63%) and 275 with normal aorta size (55%) completed the diagnosis-specific questionnaire.

Results: Ninety-six percent of men with screening detected AAA did not regret the screening examination, the corresponding figure for controls being 99.6%. Seventy percent of AAA patients were surprised that something was wrong in their body. Some (85%) of men with AAA were current or previous smokers, about half of them (45%) felt guilty about it and 78% of the current smokers in the AAA group had considered stopping smoking. Both groups considered changing lifestyle, although at a higher rate (32%) among AAA cases than controls (20%), with differences both in intention to change their ways to exercise (p = 0.019) and food intake (p = 0.001). Intergroup differences were identified for the majority of items as captured by the questionnaire where men identified with AAA reported more negative psycho-social consequences for all evaluated items except for the items: Regret of the screening examination (p = 0.069) and feeling terrified (p = 0.10). Fifty-one percent of AAA cases stated that they feared rupture, and 12% were anxious about rupture during sexual activity whereas 57% were worried about rupture during intense physical activity.

Conclusion: Men who were diagnosed with AAA reported more psychosocial consequences compared to controls; still only a minority of AAA cases reported psychosocial consequences in greater occurrence. To some degree, men with AAA also feared rupture during various types of activities. There appears to be a need for improved patient information and easy access to caregivers for men with screening-detected AAA, which might help to reduce psychosocial consequences associated with the diagnosis.