Rupture of an abdominal aortic aneurysm in a young man with Marfan Syndrome

Abdominal aortic aneurysms are very rare in Marfan syndrome. We present a case with a young non-smoking and normotensive male with Marfan syndrome, who developed an infrarenal abdominal aortic aneurysm that presented with rupture to the retroperitoneal cavity causing life-threatening bleeding shock. The patient had acute aortic surgery and survived. Five months before this incident, the patient had uneventful elective aortic root replacement (a.m David) due to an enlarged aortic root. At that time, his abdominal aorta was assessed with a routine ultrasound scan that showed a normal sized abdominal aorta. This documents that the aneurysm had evolved very rapidly despite young age, and absence of risk factors.