Abdominal pain can create risk for death from heart disease

If you feel pain in the pit of your stomach, it could be a sign of myocardial ischemia. However, if you feel severe pain around the umbilical and back pain around the waist or lower abdomen near the pelvis along with faintness and coldness of the hands and feet, you can assume that there is an aortic aneurysm in your abdomen, and it might or might not have already ruptured.

 

Aortic aneurysm is like a mass that pulsates according to the pulse around the umbilical. You can palpate it, but it doesn’t hurt. However, if you feel pain as well, it might mean that it is close to rupturing or has already ruptured. If an aortic aneurysm has ruptured, you will experience bloating and abdominal pain so intense that you can barely move. Aside from palpating the abdomen, CT scans and ultrasound tests can be used to diagnose aortic aneurysm.

If the aorta is about to rupture or has already ruptured or has bulged to the point of having a diameter greater than 5 centimeters, urgent treatment is necessary. Accordingly, a stent graft might be inserted via the groin to where the aortic aneurysm has occurred. This stent graft is opened inside the aorta and fastened in place. This is a new treatment technique that produces small incisions. Otherwise, there is also open abdominal surgery to insert a metal mesh coil (stent) to support the blood vessel. It is a standard treatment method, but it creates much larger wounds.

 

For the most part, people who are at risk of developing aortic aneurysm are elderly people, people with blood pressure problems and people with emphysema or hyperlipidemia. Genetics also plays a role. Furthermore, aortic aneurism today can also be found in younger people. For example, it can be found in people younger than 40 years who do not care for their health and only smoke, consume alcohol and very salty foods and are obese or overweight and stressed. These are all risk factors, and this disease is more common in men than women.

 

From the above, there are many risk factors for aortic aneurysm. In particular, patients with blood pressure problems have to regularly take medications and frequently measure their blood pressure in order to understand their own bodies. They should stop smoking even when there are no symptoms and should receive an abdominal ultrasound every 1-2 years. If there is an aortic aneurysm that has not become significantly enlarged, the tests should take place more frequently, for example, at every 6 months. Meanwhile, if the aorta grows in diameter by more than 5 millimeters within 6 months, you should immediately seek treatment, because it creates risk of rupture. However, if abdominal pain symptoms are present, you should also quickly seek medical attention, since good treatment outcomes for aortic aneurysm are possible with early treatment, especially if you seek treatment before tearing or rupture. This is because the mortality rate for treatment before rupture is less than 5%, while the mortality rate for that after a rupture is over 10 times higher.