Unusual course of an abdominal aortic aneurysm in a patient treated with chemotherapy for gastric cancer

Abstract

Most aortic aneurysms have a degenerative genesis and show a slow expansion over years. Only a few patients with a rapid progression of mycotic or inflammatory aneurysm during some weeks or months have been reported. We report a patient with a rapidly growing symptomatic infrarenal aneurysm with a maximal diameter of 53 mm, which developed over a 5-month period from a normal aorta and did not feature typical signs of degenerative, inflammatory, or mycotic aneurysm. The aneurysm was successfully treated by endovascular repair. A complete shrinking of the aneurysm sac was demonstrated during a few weeks postoperatively. Because the patient received chemotherapy with docetaxel, cisplatin, and 5-fluorouracil for metastatic gastric carcinoma 1 year before the aneurysm occurred, we postulate that chemotherapy induced a rapid expansion of the aorta in this patient.