Study Summary

An abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) is a ballooning of the main blood vessel (the aorta) that travels down through your tummy. An AAA can grow to a large size over time, and it may burst (rupture), causing life-threatening internal bleeding. The standard method to prevent the AAA from bursting is to re-line the aorta with a material tube that is strengthened by metal struts. This is inserted in a collapsed state, constrained by a delivery device, through the blood vessels from the artery in the groin, positioned in the aorta below the arteries supplying the kidneys and opened (deployed) under X-Ray guidance to fix it in place above and below the aneurysm. This excludes the aneurysm from the flowing blood and stops the aneurysm from expanding, reducing the risk of rupture. This is commonly known as a `keyhole' or minimally invasive approach called Endovascular (i.e., inside the aorta) aneurysm repair (EVAR). You will have discussed this procedure with your doctor.

Increasing waiting times in the National Health Service (NHS) are widely reported. Many in the NHS consider waiting times to get patients with aneurysms treated much too long for an urgent condition. The reasons for this being limitations in resources including beds and staff expertise. EVAR, to treat abdominal aortic aneurysm, has been shown to be safe and effective and does reduce the burden on health services however the length of stay in hospital is still two days or more in most patients; up till now it has not been found to be cost-effective compared to the traditional open surgical approach. COVID-19 pandemic has further restricted the resources available to get aneurysm patients treated even with keyhole techniques.

This study is designed to evaluate whether short stay EVAR (being in hospital for <24 hours for the operation) is acceptable to a wide number of patients and clinically effective. We will also study whether it is worthwhile to implement in terms of cost.

Although short stay EVAR or day case EVAR has been tried before, it has not been in any way universally accepted and so needs to be studied scientifically. One of the main factors that has not been studied is the patient view and so satisfaction, quality of life and the patient report outcome measures will be of prime importance.

Contact for patients, relatives and carers:

If you are a patient taking part in this study or a relative or carer of a study participant and you would like more information about the study please contact:

Miss Maria Nicola (Study Co-ordinator)
Telephone: 07376460675
Email: starstudy@imperial.ac.uk 

 She will be happy to discuss any concerns you have with the study or answer your questions.

Useful links:

For independent advice about taking part in research, you can visit: https://www.imperial.nhs.uk/research/taking-part

More information on vascular diseases or procedures are also available from:

• The Circulation Foundation
• The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) is the independent organisation responsible for providing national guidance (recommendations) on whether interventional procedures are safe enough and work well enough to be used routinely in the NHS.  You can read the NICE guidance on stent-graft placement in abdominal aortic aneurysms here: https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ta167