Do Women Have a Higher Risk of Adverse Events after Carotid Revascularization?

Abstract

Carotid artery stenosis is thought to cause up to 10% of ischemic strokes. Till now, the optimal treatment between carotid endarterectomy (CEA) and carotid artery stenting (CAS) remains debated, in particular for specific subgroups of patients. Available data suggest that female have higher risk of perioperative adverse events, but conflicting results comparing CEA and CAS regarding the benefit for male or female are present in the literature. A systematic review of recent publications on gender-related differences in oper-ative risks is reported. Moreover, a consecutive cohort of 912 symptomatic and asymptom- atic patients undergoing CEA (407, 44.6%) or CAS (505, 55.4%) in a single institution has been evaluated to determine the influence of gender (59.7% male vs. 40.3% female) on the outcomes after both revascularization procedures at 30 days and during 3 years of follow-up. Our experience seems to confirm literature data as regarding female higher risk of restenosis. Female patients had higher periprocedural (2.7% female vs. 0.9% male; p < 0.05) and long-term (11.4% female vs. 4.6% male; p < 0.05) restenosis rate. In conclusion, female anatomic and pathologic parameters should be taken into account for an accurate diagnosis of carotid stenosis and guidelines should be adjusted consequently. (cid:1) (SD). compli-cations, and CEA by Survival, MI, and restenosis using Kaplan-Meier to for patient dropouts and were reported using (SVS) (SE) are reported in Kaplan-Meier analyses. The log-rank was used to determine differences among patients submitted CEA and