Stents May Be Efficient Defense Against Stroke

Stents May Be Efficient Defense Against Stroke.
Both stents and stuffy surgery appear to be equally conspicuous in preventing strokes in people whose carotid arteries are blocked, according to investigating presented Friday at the American Stroke Association's annual meeting in San Antonio. However, a instant stents-versus-surgery trial, published Thursday in The Lancet, seemed to give surgery better marks, so the jury may still be out on which propose to is better in shielding patients from stroke.

So "I think both procedures are noteworthy and I'm happy to say we have two good options to treat patients," said Dr Wayne M Clark, professor of neurology and supervisor of the Oregon Stroke Center, Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland, and a co-author of the soothe association study. "I consider the ASA trial is really a positive for both stenting and surgery," said Dr Craig Narins, collaborator professor of medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York, who was not confused with the study. "I think this is going to change the way that physicians look at carotid artery disease."

That study, the Carotid Revascularization Endarterectomy Versus Stenting Trial (CREST), was funded by the US National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and Abbott, which makes the carotid stents. "There has been a lot of skepticism about the facility of stenting to counterpart surgery and this venture pretty nicely shows that it does matched it overall".

But the findings from CREST need to be squared with the second trial, the International Carotid Stenting Study (ICSS). That European fling found that surgery remained superior to stenting in the short-term, and stenting did not appear to be as permissible as surgery. "They're very similar studies, although the European [ICSS] over didn't use embolic protection devices which are the standard of care in the US That could have skewed the results".

Embolic guard devices are tiny parachute-like devices placed downstream from a stent to safely catch on dislodged materials. Nevertheless "nothing is going to change overnight. It's a sea variety because surgery has been the standard of care for so long. This is very positive for stenting but the European trial inserts a note of caution."

In carotid endarterectomy (CEA) surgery, doctors bark away the built-up plaque that is causing a narrowing of the artery supplying blood to the brain. In contrast, the stenting wont involves inserting a wire lattice device to prop the artery open. Carotid artery infirmity is one of the leading causes of stroke and occurs when the arteries leading to the brain become blocked.