Rise and fall of AAA incidence and smoking

US annual adult per capita cigarette consumption and US age-adjusted AAA mortality per 100,000 White males by year^[1,2]. For 1951 to 1978, rates are standardized to the US 1960 population as calculated by Lilienfeld et al^[3], and from 1979 onward to the US 1970 population from CDC Wonder^[4]. Rates include abdominal, thoracoabdominal, and unspecified aortic aneurysm, both ruptured and nonruptured, but exclude thoracic aneurysm and dissection. Because all non-syphilitic aortic aneurysms and dissections were combined before 1968, and 1967 to 1968 data indicate that thoracic aneurysm and dissection accounted for 20 percent of total, pre-1968 values.