Contemporary Carotid Stenting

Comparative effectiveness research (CER) is a theme that will play an increasingly important role in the discourse of medical care. The Institute of Medicine defines CER as “the generation and synthesis of evidence that compares the benefits and harms of alternative methods to prevent, diagnose, treat, and monitor a clinical condition or to improve the delivery of care” (1). Most commonly, CER is used in the context of the politically-charged environment surrounding the Affordable Care Act, in which the explicitly stated purpose of CER is to rein in the growth of healthcare costs, largely by demanding evidence that newer, more