title: Carotid bypass for carotid occlusion.
abstract: The 2-year risk of ipsilateral ischemic stroke following internal carotid artery occlusion (ICAO) in a patient undergoing maximal medical therapy is 5-8% per year. While medical therapy may reduce the risk of stroke, it does not completely eliminate it. Since the 1985 extracranial-intracranial (EC-IC) bypass study, additional trials have been conducted to further investigate the usefulness of EC-IC bypass surgery in more selected patients with cerebral ischemia and impaired hemodynamic reserve. These important studies will be briefly reviewed in this article, as well as a discussion regarding the utility of bypass surgery for ICAO in current clinical practice. In addition, a short discussion regarding the pathophysiology of carotid occlusion will be presented. We will also highlight our own institutional patient selection criteria based on the latest methods for hemodynamic assessment, as well as our intraoperative flow assisted surgical techniques (FAST), and post-operative patient follow-up.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurosurgery, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.
authors.forename: Ziad A
authors.initials: ZA
authors.lastname: Hage
authors.forename: Mandana
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Behbahani
authors.forename: Sepideh
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Amin-Hanjani
authors.forename: Fady T
authors.initials: FT
authors.lastname: Charbel
mesh_terms: D001157:Arterial Occlusive Diseases / Q000601:surgery*; D002545:Brain Ischemia / Q000601:surgery; D002340:Carotid Artery Diseases / Q000601:surgery*; D002548:Cerebral Revascularization; D006801:Humans; D019635:Neurosurgical Procedures; D020521:Stroke / Q000601:surgery