Introduction:

Abdominal aortic aneurysm is a prevalent disease in western world, with a high mortality rate when rupture occurs. Screening programs and elective surgery may prevent such a life-threatening event. We pretend to evaluate if internal medicine residents would be able to perform quality abdominal ultrasound for abdominal aortic aneurysm screening, and therefore increase our diagnostic accuracy of this life-threatening condition.

Material and Methods:

Five internal medicine residents without previous experience in ultrasound screened men over 65 years admitted to Internal Medicine wards for Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm. The patients were evaluated in different times by two internal medicine residents, and a subset of patients was also evaluated by vascular surgery attendant or abdominal computed tomography scan (established as gold standard evaluations). Agreement between both internal medicine resident’s observations and internal medicine residents’ and gold standard evaluations were analyzed.

Results:

A total of 98 patients were evaluated, with 8 abdominal aortic aneurysms diagnosed, resulting in an 8.2% prevalence. There was good agreement regarding Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm presence and measurement between internal medicine residents’ examinations (κ = 0.918, p < 0.01) and internal medicine residents’/gold standard (κ = 0.950, p < 0.01).

Discussion and Conclusion:

Abdominal aortic aneurysm prevalence in our study was high. Internal medicine residents were able to accurately diagnose aortic abdominal aneurysm. Point of care opportunistic aortic abdominal aneurysm screening can be performed in Internal Medicine wards, providing an early diagnosis and referral for elective repair surgery.

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