Use of coronary artery stents in the treatment of internal carotid artery stenosis at the base of the skull

The management of high-grade stenosis involving the petrosal segment of the internal carotid artery has been limited to angioplasty alone in the past, However, if angioplasty fails or has less than optimum results, then endov ascular stent placement should be considered. We present the first two know n cases in which the Multi-Link coronary stent was used for the treatment o f internal carotid disease in the petrosal segment. The first patient had s ymptomatic stenosis that failed angioplasty after seven months and the seco nd patient had a symptomatic lesion that dissected upon angioplasty. The fl exibility and low profile characteristics of the stent allowed it to be saf ely deployed with balloon expansion. No complications occurred and the pati ents tolerated the procedure. Patients were carefully monitored and no new neurologic events in six months of follow up occurred. These cases reveal t he good clinical results of stent placement for surgically-inaccessible les ions of the internal carotid artery in the skull base. Cathet. Cardiovasc. Diagn. 45: 434-438, 1998. (C) 1998 Wiley-Liss, Inc.