Feasibility and safety of stenting for symptomatic carotid arterial dissection.

OBJECTIVE

To determine the procedural feasibility and safety of carotid angioplasty and stent placement of carotid artery dissection (CAD) patients who had failed antithrombotic therapy in acute dissection.

METHODS

A series of 33 consecutive patients (mean age, 40.21 years; 29 men and 4 women) who underwent angioplasty and stent placement for symptomatic carotid artery dissection (sCAD) from May 2005 to December 2010 in the Nanjing Stroke Registry Program (NSRP) was retrospectively reviewed. All the included patients had been diagnosed definitively based on catheter angiography, and had failed to respond to medical therapy during the course of initial hospital admission. The baseline and followed up data of these patients were collected and analyzed.

RESULTS

Of all the 33 included patients, 32 patients had achieved technical success without any intraoperative complications. Two patients manifested ipsilateral Horner sign on the next day after stenting, and one of them suffered from recurrence of transient ischaemic attack (TIA) during the course of follow up, but completely remission via antithrombotic therapy.

CONCLUSION

Endovascular stenting is a feasible and safe therapeutic strategy of CAD patients who have failed medical therapy.