This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
Mortality from carotid stenting decreases as procedures increase nationally
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
The use of carotid artery stenting increased between 2001 and 2005, accompanied by a decrease in overall mortality, recent study results suggested.
Data presented by John C. Wang, MD, a vascular surgeon at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia, showed an increase in the use of carotid stenting despite its higher mortality and stroke rates in asymptomatic and symptomatic patients. The data for carotid endarterectomy and carotid stenting procedures used in the observational study were drawn from the National Inpatient Sample database between 2001 and 2005.
“Carotid endarterectomy is the gold standard for the treatment of carotid occlusive disease, and the contemporary clinical experience confirms its low stroke rate and mortality, even for symptomatic high-risk patients,” Wang said in a presentation. “Carotid angioplasty and stenting has been proposed as a less invasive alternative to endarterectomy.”
According to an abstract, 582,565 carotid endarterectomy procedures were performed between 2001 and 2005, compared with 39,829 carotid stenting procedures. The number of carotid stenting procedures increased from 5,473 in 2001 to 12,919 in 2005. Carotid artery stenting had a higher overall mortality rate (1.3% vs. 0.6%; P<.005) and stroke rate (1.94% vs. 1.1%; P<.005) when compared with carotid endarterectomy. The national trend in mortality for carotid stenting, however, decreased progressively from 1.37% in 2001 to 0.9% in 2005, according to Wang.
“There is a need to follow outcomes to determine if trends in the stroke and death rates in carotid artery stenting will continue to decline,” Wang said. “There is also a need to define the subset of patients who will actually benefit from carotid artery stenting, therefore underlining the need for prospective, randomized clinical trial data.”
For more information:
- Wang J. #SS37.