Carotid Surgery Lowers Stroke Risk in Some Patients
Friday, September 24, 2010
By: Michael Smith

MedPage Today

For patients younger than 75 with asymptomatic narrowing of the carotid artery, surgery to open the vessel significantly reduces the risk of stroke over the next 10 years, researchers reported.

The reduction is about 46% and about half of that is in disabling and fatal strokes, according to Alison Halliday, FRCS, of John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, England, and colleagues.

On the other hand, the surgery itself has about a 3% risk of perioperative stroke, Halliday and colleagues reported in the Sept. 25 issue of The Lancet.

The findings come from the Asymptomatic Carotid Surgery Trial 1, which enrolled 3,120 patients from 30 countries between 1993 and 2003 and followed survivors for a median of nine years, the researchers reported.

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