Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm (AAA) Screening Programme annual report

This is the fifth annual report for the Northern Ireland Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm (AAA) Screening Programme since it was introduced in June 2012. It has been produced jointly by the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust and the Public Health Agency.  As well as updates on the role of primary care and service users in helping with programme development and ongoing improvements this is the first year health inequalities data has featured in the report.  Overall performance of the programme remained high (refer to Section 5 for more detail) with the following of note:

• Almost 9,000 men in their 65th year were invited to attend for screening
• Uptake was 84% of those invited attending for screening, up slightly from the previous year’s 83%
• 830 men over 65 who had never been screened before self-referred to the programme and were screened
• 107 men screened had a newly detected AAA
• 24 men had a large aneurysm and were referred to the vascular team to consider treatment options