A NEW screening service has been rolled out in community hospitals and GP surgeries across Oxfordshire to help prevent men dying from burst abdominal arteries.

Men will receive a letter on their 65th birthdays inviting them to receive the ultrasound scan to check for abdominal aortic aneurysms.

Burst swollen abdominal arteries lead to about 6,000 UK deaths a year – two per cent of deaths in men over the age of 65. There are few symptoms. In the past aneurysms were discovered during routine scans.

Risk factors for men include smoking, high blood pressure and having a family history of the condition.

Programme director Jeremy Perkins said: “We are doing this to save men from premature death from rupture of the abdominal artery by adopting a simple, painless test that can be applied in a community setting and will detect patients with aneurysms.

“The message is to come along and have the scan, on the basis that it may pick up a potentially life-threating condition.”

Retired engineer Brian Marks, 74, was scanned and given the all clear. He said: “Better safe than sorry.”