Aneurysm ?

Question: My father has anerusym which we incidentally found, no symptoms.Angiogram was done and it is found that aneurysm is in the blood vessel that supplies blood to brain.He is 71yrs.Docs feel that at his age and considering the location of aneurysm, surgery or grafting is not recommended.The size of aneurysm is 4.7cm.Advice of docs is to keep the bloodpressure under control,quit smoking ( he has been a smoker for a very long tome) and get the CT scan done periodically to see if there is growth.They are not ruling out the risk in not doing the surgery,but they feel that at this time surgery might be more risky.

I am worried that the aneurysm might rupture and from what I've read ruptured aneurysm is potentially fatal. So I feel surgery is better.

Any advice ?

Answers:
It is always a risk that an aneurysm may rupture, that's true. However, there is also always a risk inherent in surgery or intravascular intervention - the trick, and what doctors are trained to do, is to guess what the risk is for each and do the safer thing.
For instance (and I can't stress enough that these numbers are completely made up, I'm not a neurosurgeon and don't know the real ones, but your surgeons should) - let's say there's a 5% chance of an aneurysm of that size and location rupturing per year, but with the location and your father's age and medical history, the risk of serious morbidity or mortality from surgery is 12%, then the best thing to do would be to not do surgery and wait until either the risk of one or the other changes such that the risk of waiting becomes greater.
I know that's not the most satisfying answer in the world, but doctors have to make these decisions all the time, if you don't agree with your surgeons, you can always get another opinion, but be aware that this is the calculation being made, and that sometimes doing something is worse than doing nothing.

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The common sense advice is to listen to the DOCTOR.

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