Alan's story
At the tender age of just over 65 I was diagnosed, through routine screening, as having a large abdominal aorta aneurism (AAA) and given a 16% chance of surviving a year if it was not operated on quite quickly. The proposed operation was to be done under private medical insurance provided by my employer’s group medical insurance. After other tests and a pre-operation assessment some handful of weeks later I was taken by my wife to the area teaching hospital (the local private hospital did not have adequate facilities for this kind of medical work) for elective surgery to have the abdominal aorta aneurism stented to relief the pressure on the aorta walls. It had been thought initially that this could be done using...