Carotid arterial stent implantation follow-up and results in 50 patients: preliminary report

BACKGROUND: Carotid artery stenting (CAS) is considered as a safe and effective procedure for treatment of carotid artery stenosis. Evaluation of this procedure's complications is essential for proper clinical decision-making. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to evaluate the cardiovascular events after CAS among our patients in Isfahan, Iran. METHODS: This case-series study was conducted on fifty patients from December 2013 to May 2016. These patients were referred to the cardiology centers of Isfahan, Iran by a neurologist, for stenting of extracranial carotid arteries. The second step was examining the patients by cardiac interventionist. Stenting was performed on symptomatic patients with carotid artery stenosis of more than 50 percent or asymptomatic patients with more than 70 percent carotid artery stenosis on Doppler ultrasonography. Neurologic evaluation was performed at baseline, during hospital stay, and follow-up. Transient ischemic attack (TIA)/Stroke and Myocardial infarction (MI) questionnaires were filled out by a cardiologist over telephone interviews with the patients, for follow-up of one month, six months and at the end of study. Carotid Doppler ultrasonography was performed before and 6 months after stenting for evaluation of restenosis. Indeed, during the follow-up study, the major adverse cardiac events (MACE) were evaluated. All data were analyzed through SPSS v.17. RESULTS: The mean age of patients was 70.73 (±14.01) years old (range: 48-89 years old). Composite endpoint of death, stroke, and MI was totally 8 percent. The rate of carotid arterial restenosis (Luminal arterial narrowing>50%) was 8%. CONCLUSIONS: Despite the fact that carotid stenting is new in our center, our results can be compared to other important studies.