Endovascular angioplasty and stenting (CAS) has evolved as an alternative for treating occlusive carotid diseases in recent years. Carotid diseases are characterized by manifold etiologies and miscellaneous clinical manifestations. Although CAS is efficacious in treating patients with occlusive carotid diseases as a whole, the long-term risk-benefit ratio may vary in individual patients. Interv...

Detachable balloon embolization has become well established as the primary treatment for carotid cavernous fistulae, and numerous articles have been written on techniques for balloon placement in the cavernous sinus [1-3]. Recently, several case reports have described the use of angioplasty of the internal carotid artery for stenosis resulting from either fibromuscular dysplasia or arterioscler...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE The use of cocaine has been associated with stroke. To evaluate carotid vasospasm as a potential mechanism of cocaine-induced stroke, we studied 12 swine immediately and 10 weeks after angioplasty. METHODS We compared the short- and long-term vasoconstrictor responses of normal and injured arterial segments to nitroglycerin, histamine, and cocaine in vivo by carotid ang...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Cerebral microembolic signals detected by transcranial Doppler are frequent during carotid angioplasty with stenting and carotid endarterectomy (CEA). Their potential harmful effects on the brain are, however, unclear. The aim of this study was to relate the frequency and type of per-procedural microembolic signals to procedure-related ipsilateral ischemic strokes and new...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Carotid angioplasty and stent placement may be the preferred treatment in patients with carotid dissection who have failed medical management. The goal of this study was to determine the procedural feasibility and safety as well as long-term complication rates of carotid angioplasty and stent placement in a consecutive cohort of relatively young, high-surgical-risk patien...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE The optimal treatment of patients with symptomatic carotid stenosis who are poor surgical candidates is uncertain. The purposes of this study were to report the long-term outcome after angioplasty in a series of these patients and to compare these data with historical control data from the North American Symptomatic Carotid Endarterectomy Trial (NASCET). METHODS We iden...

To study the determinants of smooth muscle injury during balloon angioplasty, we conducted a series of experiments to examine the effects of degree of arterial stretching, duration of balloon inflation, and arterial precontraction on smooth muscle injury after balloon angioplasty in isolated, perfused whole-vessel segments of rabbit aortas and dog carotid arteries. Freshly dissected rabbit thor...