Bulletin No. 2, 2014

News in Brief  41  Effectiveness of Carotid Angioplasty and Stenting Proven A study conducted by the Department of Medicine and Therapeutics and Department of Imaging and Interventional Radiology reveals that head and neck cancer patients receiving radiotherapy are more likely to develop severe vascular diseases and even occlusions, leading to higher risk of stroke. From October 2006 to April 2010, the Department of Imaging and Interventional Radiology performed Carotid Angioplasty and Stenting (CAS) on 194 patients with carotid stenosis and evaluated them at a four-year follow-up. Among them, 65 were patients with radiation- induced carotid stenosis (RIS) and 129 were cases of atherosclerotic stenosis. CAS is an image - guided and minimally invasive way of vascular reconstruction, in which the diseased vascular segment is lined with a stent endovascularly and dilated with balloon angioplasty, without a surgical wound at the neck. CAS is found to be an effective treatment for RIS with 100% procedural success rate in 65 studied cases, reducing the annual risk of ipsilateral stroke to 1.2%. It is also proven to be a safe treatment with 1.5% risk of peri-procedural stork or death. CAS has similar effectiveness on atherosclerotic stenosis cases. Dr. Thomas Leung (left), Lee Quo Wei Associate Professor of Neurology, Department of Medicine and Therapeutics, and Prof. Simon Yu of Department of Imaging and Interventional Radiology