Connect
Measuring assending Aortic aneurysm length
What do they use to measure the length, and how do you know if it's bad ?
I have a 46mm and that's the only measurement I find. They did a high resolution ct. I would have thought it could be measured,but maybe not. They also defined mine as dilated and not an aneurysm, I've seen that discussed a couple times, but really unclear on the difference. You would think 46 would be big enough to be called an aneurysm.
Like
Helpful
HugInterested in more discussions like this? Go to the Aortic Aneurysms Support Group.
Connect
I have had multiple CTs the past four years. Not once has the tech reading the images highlighted the length. The Dr. I am seeing at Montefiore Medical in the Bronx is the only one who has brought up the length. My length is around 11.5 cm. He also looks at the ratio of the diameter of the ascending aortic value vs the diameter of the descending aortic valve. He has shared with me recent research (published within the past year) that suggests length is a stronger determinant of the risk of dissection than the width which is what almost everyone focuses on. It seems the magic number for surgery for most surgeons (absent other possible risk factors) is an aneurysm of 5.5 cm or growth > 0.5 cm in one year. Frankly, you can go to five different doctors and receive five different answers and also receive five different measurements.
I can’t answer the difference between dilated and an aneurysm
Image attached
I have 3 images with measurements... one is the 46 width, one is 35 pulminary trunk, and the last one is 13, but don't know what it is.
Sorry, I can’t help you there.
Hi:'
If you are interested in length nd dissection go to PUBMED ( https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ ) with the following phrase- ascending aorta length and dissection. The article referenced above is on the first page you will see. It is one of 677 articles. All will have an abstract. Some will have free access. You can search any medical topic, limit it to humans , search authors etc. It uses Boolean searches. This is done with things like and,or,not between terms like disease state and treatment, symptom and cause. Best of health to all of us.
We had luck measuring the length of the aneurysm from the images that were downloaded on the patient gateway. We opened that on our laptop. It seems to come ( at least from MGH) with a program that permits various operations when you open the image. . At the top banner, there is a ruler icon, click on that, bring cursor down to desired starting point. Left click and hold. Now, when you move the cursor, it draws a line to wherever you want the end point to be, and the measurement appears. Tricky but also amazing.
I was surprised to see a length of almost 9 cm. I’ll try to attach chart from the Yale article.
Yes, I can get the images, but the trick would be ... how to tell the assending aorta. I don't see any pictures that show a side or front view. Nothing looks like whaT I see on the net.
This is about the only image that looks close, and not sure if I measured it a cross correctly, but the length.. no idea how to do a straight line measure.
I see your problem. These are much easier images to measure.
Yes, I wish mine was shown like that