Research Article Abdominal Aortic Aneurysms and Coronary Artery Disease in a Small Country with High Cardiovascular Burden Hassan Al-Thani 1,2 and Ayman El-Menyar 3,4,5 1 Vascular Surgery, Hamad General Hospital, P.O. Box 3050, Doha, Qatar 2 General Surgery, Hamad General Hospital, Doha, Qatar 3 Clinical Research, Hamad General Hospital, HMC, P.O. Box 3050, Doha, Qatar 4 Clinical Medicine, Weill Cornell Medical School, P.O. Box 24144, Doha, Qatar 5 Cardiology Unit, Internal Medicine, Ahmed Maher Teaching Hospital, Cairo, Egypt Correspondence should be addressed to Ayman El-Menyar; aymanco65@yahoo.com Received 24 November 2013; Accepted 13 January 2014; Published 20 February 2014 Academic Editors: A. Becker, J. A. F. Ramires, and A. Stephanou Copyright © 2014 H. Al- hani and A. El-Menyar. his is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. We aimed to evaluate the frequency, clinical proiles and outcomes of abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAA), and their association with coronary artery disease (CAD) in a small country with high cardiovascular burden. Methods. Data were collected for all adult patients who underwent abdominal computed tomography scans at Hamad General Hospital in Qatar between 2004 and 2008. Results. Out of 13,115 screened patients for various reasons, 61 patients (0.5%) had abdominal aneurysms. he majority of AAA patients were male (82%) with a mean age of 67 ± 12 years. he incidence of AAA substantially increased with age reaching up to 5% in patients >80yrs. Hypertension was the most prevalent risk factor for AAA followed by smoking, dyslipidemia, renal impairment, and diabetes mellitus. CAD and peripheral arterial disease (PAD) were observed in 36% and 13% of AAA patients, respectively. here were no signiicant correlations between CAD or PAD and site and size of AAA. Conclusion. his is the largest study in our region that describes the epidemiology of AAA with concomitant CAD. As the mortality rate is quite high in this high risk population, routine screening for AAA in CAD patients and vice versa needs further studies for proper risk stratiication. 1. Introduction Screening programs for abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) are lacking in the developing countries. Global data reported that the prevalence of AAA varies in men (1.3%–8.9%) and women (11%–2.2%) [1]. he rising incidence of AAA is related mainly to the increase in age, physician awareness with clinical high index of suspicion, and the use of advanced diagnostic modali- ties. As AAA is a silent process, it may present only with aneurysmal rupture in most of cases. It was believed for a long time that atherosclerosis is the main pathogenesis of AAA. However, this speculation has raised a question that whether atherosclerosis is a “bystander” condition or an active factor for the initiation or acceleration of AAA [1, 2]. In a systematic review, Elkalioubie et al. evaluated 17 published studies between 1991 and 2010 [1]. he authors found that the frequency of AAA among coronary artery disease patients ranged between 0.48% and 18.2% [1]. As advanced age is a potential risk factor for both coronary artery disease and AAA, ive studies speciically recruited patients who were above 60 years. Salem et al. [3] reported a lower prevalence of AAA among men of Asian origin (China and Iran), indicating that certain ethnic groups experience a disproportionately smaller burden of AAA. Notably, the prevalence of AAA in coronary artery disease patients was comparable to that reported in AAA screening studies among patients with diferent vascular bed afection such as periph- eral vascular disease (PAD) (7%–17%) and cerebrovascular disease (8.4%–20.2%) [1, 4, 5]. Herein, we aim to evaluate the frequency, clinical proiles and outcomes of AAA, and Hindawi Publishing Corporation ISRN Cardiology Volume 2014, Article ID 825461, 4 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/825461