2011 Volume 20 Issue 7 Pages 941-945
A 37-year-old man visited our hospital with a principal complaint of severe abdominal pain. He had received immunosuppressive therapy since age 31 due to aplastic anemia. At the age of 36, he had undergone computed tomography (CT) due to intermittent claudication, and peripheral arterial disease had been diagnosed. However, his abdominal aorta at that time was 22 mm × 23 mm, and irregularities were observed only in the arterial wall. On CT images obtained at the current presentation (at age 37), the abdominal aorta was 44 mm × 47 mm, showing a rapid enlargement of 24 mm within the previous 18 months. With a diagnosis of impending rupture of an abdominal aortic aneurysm, an urgent Y-type blood vessel prosthesis implantation was performed. Histopathological examination showed the aneurysm to be arteriosclerotic. The possibility that cyclosporine and anabolic steroids were involved in the shape of the aneurysm and its expansion was considered. We report a case of an arteriosclerotic abdominal aortic aneurysm, of which impending rupture appeared to be imminent, in a young man who had been receiving immunosuppressive therapy for aplastic anemia.
