Abdominal aortic aneurysm after pulmonary transplantation: A case report

Abstract

We present the case of a 39-year-old man who underwent repair of a symptomatic 5-cm abdominal aortic aneurysm. This patient had received a bilateral lung transplant for cystic fibrosis 10 years before this event. He was receiving cyclosporine, prednisone, and azathioprine as immunosuppression therapy. To our knowledge, this is the first reported abdominal aortic aneurysm after lung transplantation, and we note that our patient had a rapidly enlarging aneurysm, as seen in recipients of heart transplants. We postulate that immunosuppression may be related to the development and/or rapid growth of abdominal aortic aneurysms.