The long-term outcomes of open and endovascular repair for abdominal aortic aneurysm: A meta-analysis

Summary: To provide a meta-analysis of studies evaluating long-term all-cause mortality, aneurysm-related mortality and re-intervention after open or endovascular repair for abdominal aortic aneurysm. Electronic bibliographic sources were interrogated using a combination of free text and controlled vocabulary searches to identify studies comparing the long-term outcomes of open and endovascular repair for abdominal aortic aneurysm. The review was conducted according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement standards. Fixed effect or random effects models were used. We retrieved 4 randomized controlled trials (RCTs; 2,783 patients), 7 nonrandomized trials (86,035 patients). The primary outcome was all-cause mortality. Heterogeneity was high and publication bias could not be excluded. Despite these limitations, the analysis showed that open and endovascular abdominal aortic aneurysm repair had similar all-cause mortality (OR 1.16, 95% CI, 0.89–1.51) over 5 years follow up, which was maintained after at least 10 years of follow-up (OR 0.87, 95% CI, 0.73–1.03). There was no significant difference in aneurysm-related mortality by 5 years or longer follow-up. A significantly lower proportion of patients undergoing open repair required reintervention (OR 0.38, 95% CI 0.24–0.64), which was maintained over 5 years of follow-up. There is no long-term survival difference between the patients who underwent open or endovascular aneurysm repair. There is significantly higher risk of reinterventions after endovascular aneurysm repair. Keywords: Abdominal aortic aneurysm, Endovascular repair, Meta-analysis, Open surgery