Impact on quality of life of men with screening-detected abdominal aortic aneurysms attending regular follow ups: a narrative literature review

Objective: This study aimed to review, summarise, and assess the available evidence regarding the impact on the quality of life (QoL) of men undergoing screening for abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) and attending regular follow ups. Methods: PubMed, MEDLINE, CINAHL, and PsycINFO were used for searching. The search was performed from April to July 2016, with an update in February–March 2018. The quality of the studies was appraised with respective checklists from the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme. A narrative synthesis of the included studies was performed. The analysis included studies evaluating QoL in relation to one or more of the following concepts: physical function, psychological impact and social life in men undergoing AAA screening, but excluded studies evaluating QoL in AAA patients diagnosed outside a screening program. Results: The initial results from the search were 128 articles. Duplicates were removed, titles and abstracts were screened, and 22 full text articles were collected. Based on the inclusion criteria, 11 quantitative studies were included. Inferior quality of life among men with detected AAA was identified compared to those without the diagnosis and the general population in the included studies. The self-perceived health decreased over time for the participants with AAA. Assessments after surgery showed that the participants returned to similar health as before the screening. A wide variety of factors regarding the methodologies, designs, measurements, sample sizes, and the time for the assessment were noted in the included studies. Conclusion: Quality of life is an important outcome for AAA screening and studies have been conducted in an attempt to address the imbalance between benefits and harm. However, it is still difficult to draw clear conclusions, possibly due to the heterogeneity of the original studies. Nevertheless, it is important to identify men with an AAA who develop conditions influencing their health and QoL in order to understand their care needs to further support them and improve their situation.