Editor's Choice – The Prevalence of Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm in First Degree Relatives: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: To summarise current knowledge regarding the prevalence of abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) in first degree relatives and provide a summary estimate of the association between AAA heredity and development. DATA SOURCES: Medline, Embase, and Web of Science. REVIEW METHODS: PRISMA systematic review guidelines were followed. The literature search covered inception to 13 March 2025. Original English language studies investigating the prevalence of AAA in first degree relatives were included. The Newcastle-Ottawa scale was used for quality assessment. Unadjusted odds ratio (OR) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated using random effects meta-analyses. Sensitivity analysis excluding outliers, and a stratified analyses by sex and methodology were performed. Certainty of evidence was assessed with GRADE methodology. The protocol was published in PROSPERO (CRD42025644846). RESULTS: = 91.30%; p <.001). Sensitivity analysis using contemporary data estimated an OR of 1.98 (95% CI 1.77 - 2.22) with low heterogeneity. Subgroup analysis estimated an OR of 2.16 (95% CI 1.59 - 2.92) for male and 1.88 (95% CI 1.33 - 2.96) for female first degree relatives. By detection method, ORs were 2.11 (95% CI 1.45 - 3.07) for ultrasound or register and 4.25 (95% CI 1.81 - 9.98) for questionnaire based studies. GRADE indicated very low certainty of evidence for the main results and high for the sensitivity analysis. CONCLUSION: Despite the lack of scientific evidence in the field, societal guidelines recommend targeted screening of first degree relatives of AAA patients. This meta-analysis shows a more than threefold increased risk of developing AAA in first degree relatives. These results confirm that targeted screening of first degree relatives of patients with AAA should be applied in clinical practice.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.029 | 0.138 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.016 | 0.009 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.005 | 0.006 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.008 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.037 | 0.003 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".