Respiratory obstruction has been reported as a complication of carotid endarterectomy; the causes include traumatic mucosal oedema, direct tracheal compression by haematoma and oedema secondary to lymphatic and venous congestion. We report four cases of acute respiratory obstruction complicating carotid endarterectomy. Two of these cases suffered respiratory arrest in the postoperative ward and...

Cerebral hemorrhage, an unusual complication of endarterectomy, is often attributed to postoperative hypertension. A patient with a middle cerebral artery stroke had a hemorrhage without hypertension, 2 days postoperatively. Pronounced contrast enhancement of the infarction during the 7 weeks prior to surgery reflected severe disruption of the blood-brain barrier. Contrast CT scans may detect p...

This study prospectively attempted to assess the need for shunting by preoperative digital compression of the proximal common carotid artery and correlated these findings with intraoperative assessment while performing carotid endarterectomy under local anaesthesia. Preoperative digital compression is highly predictive of the need for shunting intra-operatively and can be used as a valuable tes...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE We sought to determine the incidence of recurrent stenosis after carotid endarterectomy. METHODS One thousand consecutive carotid endarterectomy patients were followed prospectively. The surgery was performed in a standard fashion. Cerebral protection was provided with intraoperative electroencephalographic monitoring and selective shunting. All arteriotomies were repai...

Recently, the use of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) for treatment of coronary artery disease has progressively increased. A large number of simple stenoses in one or two coronary vessels can be treated by PCI. Therefore, the number of high-risk and severely diseased patients referred for coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) has been relatively increasing. Coronary endarterectomy has...

The appropriate surgical strategy for patients with combined carotid and coronary artery disease remains controversial. We retrospectively compared our surgical results for 2 types of approaches in this disorder. The records of 76 patients consecutively operated on for carotid and coronary artery disease between August 1993 and October 2004 were reviewed. There were 18 males (66.6%) and 9 femal...