Innominate Artery Stenting: A Single Centre Experience

Innominate and common carotid artery lesions have usually been treated surgically with extra-anatomic bypass via a cervical approach or median sternotomy. The transtoracic approach succeeded in providing direct access to proximal aortic arch branch vessel lesions, but these approach was associated with rather high mortality rate (22%) [1-4]. In 1967, Diethrich et al. [5] reported the first extra-thoracic supraortic trunks (SATs) reconstruction with a dramatic reduction in the mortality rate (from 22% to 5.6%) [5]. A further evolution in the treatment of atherosclerotic lesions of the SATs occurred in the 1980s as percutaneous transluminal angioplasty (PTA) techniques were applied to these lesions. Initially these lesions were treated with PTA alone [613], but subsequent studies have reported an improvement in these initial results when stenting implantation was associated to balloon angioplasty [11,14-17]. Recent reports, with short and midterm results, suggest that percutaneous treatment of the innominate arteries can be performed with relatively safety and expectations of satisfactory mid-term success [6,9-12,18,19]. In our Center we have performed 6 procedures of PTA and stenting for stenotic and occlusive innominate artery lesions. This paper reports the retrospective analysis of these 6 cases. Methods