Grant: Project Grant

The aorta is the largest vessel in our bodies. It starts at the exit of the heart and carries blood towards all other regions of the body. Normally the aorta is a cylindrical tube with smooth walls and is very strong. You would need the blood pressure to increase 8-times in order to break a normal aorta. Unfortunately, in some cases the aorta loses its strength, starts ballooning and an aneurysm is formed. An aneurysm is often discovered by chance - during routine ultrasound or X-rays tests. After the diagnosis, the patient is referred to a vascular surgeon who identifies the risks of surgery against the risks of sudden death due to rupture of the aneurysm. If left untreated, an aneurysm will gradually expand until rupture. However this expansion can in some cases be extremely slow and causing limited risks to the life of the patient. Aneurysm repair is a major surgery and carries significant risks, even when it is done via a catheter inserted into the groin of the patient. Therefore, it is important to determine when the risk of rupture of the aneurysm justifies repair. Ideally, in order to determine whether an individual patient is at risk for aneurysm rupture, the surgeon would have to obtain biopsies of the aorta at many different locations, transfer the pieces to a laboratory and perform tests. This is impossible because it would require an invasive surgical operation. Our goal is to identify a measure of risk that is reliable, better than the current size measurements, and that can be obtained without subjecting the patient to invasive surgery. In order to do so, we will study a large registry of aneurysm patients that are being followed-up every few months. In addition we will also study tissues from patients that have been selected for surgery and propose an engineering method that can help provide better indications of risk using just medical tests that are currently used by doctors, such as CT scans and blood pressure measurements.