Addressing the feasibility of abdominal aortic aneurysm screening in Hungarian primary care

In Hungary, there is currently no institutionalised, organised, invitation-based screening programme for the detection of abdominal aortic aneurysms. In contrast, an increasing number of countries are developing and launching their own pilot abdominal aortic aneurysm screening programmes, as was recently the case in the Czech Republic on the first of January 2025. In Hungary, a validation pilot study was initiated in the autumn of 2023, in which a subset of general practitioners - who previously participated in point-of-care ultrasound training and demonstrated proficiency in the abdominal aortic aneurysm examination technique - are screening patients belonging to the target population in their own practices, under radiological validation, to detect abdominal aortic aneurysms. The aim of our ongoing study is to determine whether ultrasound-based abdominal aortic aneurysm screening is justified in Hungarian primary care. During the study, a positive screening result requiring vascular surgical intervention was obtained within a short timeframe by one of the participating general practitioners, despite the relatively low number of patients screened at the time of detection. The purpose of our case report is to highlight that, after a simple and brief training period, general practitioners can perform accurate, radiologically evaluable, and standardised examinations, enabling the timely detection of this potentially life-threatening condition through a screening process that takes only a few minutes. By doing so, the elective surgical treatment of mostly asymptomatic abdominal aortic aneurysms can be life-saving, preventing rupture of the aortic wall.