Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm Ultrasound Screening - AAA Clinical Examination - Dr Gill

Name: Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm Ultrasound Screening - AAA Clinical Examination - Dr Gill
Uploaded: 2026-03-24T23:25:27.665Z
Duration: 7 min 34 s
Channel: Dr James Gill

Dr James Gill

490 Video Views·Mar 24, 2026

Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm Ultrasound Screening - AAA Clinical Examination - Dr Gill

One of the most effective screening techniques that we have is that of using an ultrasound probe to determine if a patient has an increased diameter of the abdominal aorta, as referred to as an aneurysm.

This screening is important, as when detected early, it allows the aneurysm to be monitored, and potentially treated. Conversely, if an aneurysm is not detected, and should go onto rupture, the survival rate of an out-of-hospital rupture is less than 10%.

My name is Dr Gill. I've been asked to do an ultrasound scan on you today. Before we start, can I please confirm your name and date of birth? Charles Harvey, 4th January 2000. Fantastic. In terms of this scan, this is going to be part of the screening to have a look at the blood vessels in your stomach, the aorta. Have you ever had an ultrasound scan before? Yes. And did you have any problems with the gel or anything like that? No. So no allergies? No. Fantastic. So in terms of doing this scan, is there any reason for it? Is there any family history of problems with these blood vessels? No, I think it's more just to check if there's any sort of abnormalities of my aorta. Okay, fair enough. So what I'm going to ask you to do, if I can get you to take your shirt off, we'll get you to lie on the bed. I'll just press round your abdomen and see if I can feel any lumps and bumps and see if I can feel the aorta with my hands and then we'll have a listen and also look with the probe. And I'll go through as we're doing this. Sure. Okay, so looking over the stomach, I can just see a single scar there. What's that from? I'm not having my appendix removed. Okay, so I'm just going to press over the stomach. Do you have any areas of pain at the moment? No. So I'm just going to go around lightly. Okay, any problems with that? No. I'm going to do the same, but I'm going to go a little bit deeper now. Okay, I can't feel any masses there. I'm just going to check on the back. I'm just quickly checking it with the lever. So take a deep breath in for me. And out. In. And out. In. And out. Okay, just the same for the spleen. Deep breath in. And out. In. And out. In. And out. In. And out. Okay, quick tap. Okay, so that's all it is I expect. I'm just going to check the bladder. Breathe in for me. And out. In. And out. That's fine. So there's no obvious abnormalities now. I'm just going to press quite firmly down on the centre of her abdomen and see if I can feel this pulse. Okay, so there's nothing pulsing there. And I couldn't feel any masses either. So that seems to be okay to start off with. I'm now going to have a listen. Okay, no problems there. And no problems there either. Okay. So I haven't found any clear masses, which is a good thing. Unfortunately, the examination is only about 60% effective, which is why we're going to do the ultrasound. So here's some paper. If you could just tuck that into the top of your trousers so you don't accidentally get any gel anywhere. So I'm just going to switch the window over. Okay, so that's the abdomen. Okay. Unfortunately, the gel is not warm, so it will be slightly chilly. I'm just going to put that down the centre, and we're going to see what we can see. So if I tap in the right side of the probe, you can see it coming out on the left side of the screen. So if I rotate the probe around like so, the probe will be showing me the left side of the patient as I'm scanning the left side of the patient. Conversely, if I'm this way up, then that will correspond with the right side of the probe coming down this way. And we're starting off right at the top, trying to find the ziphosternum. So that bright bit at the top, that's the bone there at the top of the chest. And we're going to press down. So we might have to press a bit firmly. Let's see if we can find the stomach to start off with. I'm just going to change the gain slightly. There we go. And here we can just see the outline of the stomach. And now we're going to come a little bit further and see if we can see the aorta. And there we can see the aorta, right at the top there. We've got a nice beating away. I'm going to come a little bit further down. Grab some of that jelly. There we go, right in the centre of the screen we can see it. And we've got a nice circle with it definitely. I'm just going to press a little bit firmly. There we go. We know that's the aorta because it's not compressible. And there's a nice outline to it as well. I'm going to come a bit further down. So we bifurcate just at the umbilicus. So we're going to look just above that. And we can see the IVC. And I'm just going to come a little bit further up. Get a good picture and then we'll freeze the image. And I'm just going to put a measurement over it. So we want much less than the three centimetres that we'd have as a worry. I'm just going to go back to unfreezing it. And I'm going to carry it all the way down. Let's see if we can see the bifurcation. Fine. And just make sure everything's looking good there. Okay, so you can use the paper to wipe that up. So we've got no abnormalities there. The ultrasound has shown us the aorta is less than three centimetres. So there's no worries at all. Do you have any questions for myself? No. Fantastic, I'll let you go and clean up. Thank you.