These risk factors can be easily determined on admission and may be used to help improve patient selection for surgical intervention. The current operative mortality rate for ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm remains high, and in some cases health care resources are used in a nonproductive fashion. Restricted patient selection and allocation of scarce resources will bring advantages to both the patient and the community.

In the claudicating sportsperson, where there are no well characterised specific anatomical abnormalities, the syndrome can be characterised by provocative clinical (particularly hopping) and non-invasive tests. A positive clinical outcome with surgery can be predicted by abnormal pre-surgical ultrasonic investigations and confirmed later by a similar normal post surgical study. Concomitant venous compression may occur while standing with both syndromes related to muscle hypertrophy.