COVID-19-positive ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm successfully managed by open surgical repair and review of literature

Abstract

COVID-19 pandemic has affected everyone globally in every walk of life. A rise in the number of patients afflicted with thromboembolic complications of COVID-19 is being reported, both venous and arterial. Elective vascular surgery has been stopped entirely at our institute. However, both COVID-19-positive and negative patients continued to require emergent vascular surgery even during the pandemic. We are reporting a case of COVID-positive, ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) who was successfully managed at our hospital. The principles of open repair of ruptured AAA remained same, with a few special considerations. We did not find any report on open repair of ruptured AAA in COVID-19-positive patient. On search at Medline, we found two cases of ruptured AAA, which were successfully managed with endovascular aneurysm repair (EVAR).