Pm. Rothwell et Cp. Warlow, Prediction of benefit from carotid endarterectomy in individual patients: a risk-modelling study, LANCET, 353(9170), 1999, pp. 2105-2110
Citations number
28
Categorie Soggetti
General & Internal Medicine","Medical Research General Topics
Background Carotid endarterectomy lowers the risk of carotid territory ipsi
lateral ischaemic stroke, and is the treatment of choice, in patients with
recently symptomatic 70-99% carotid stenosis. However, the 3-year risk of s
troke on medical treatment alone is only about 20%. We investigated whether
the efficacy of endarterectomy would be improved if patients with a high r
isk of stroke on medical treatment and a low risk of operative stroke or de
ath could be identified.
Methods We developed two prognostic models from data on patients with 0-69%
carotid stenosis in the European Carotid Surgery Trial (ECST). The medical
model predicted risk of ipsilateral carotid territory major ischaemic stro
ke (fatal or lasting longer than 7 days) on medical treatment and the surgi
cal model predicted risk of major stroke and death within 30 days of endart
erectomy. From these models we developed a prognostic score to identify pat
ients with a high risk of stroke on medical treatment but a low operative r
isk. We validated the models and tested the scoring system on 990 ECST pati
ents with 70-99% carotid stenosis assigned surgery (594) or medical treatme
nt only (396).
Findings When patients with 70-99% stenosis were stratified by the scoring
system, which was based on seven independent prl,gnostic factors, endartere
ctomy was beneficial in only 162 (16%) patients. The 5-year absolute risk o
f carotid territory ipsilateral major ischaemic stroke, operative major str
oke, or death was lowered by 33% in the 16% of patients with a sr:ore of 4
or more (odds ratio 0.12 [95% CI 0.05-0.29], p<0.0001), but not in the othe
r 828 (84%) patients (1.00 [0.45-1.54], p=0.7).
Interpretation Many patients with recently symptomatic 70-99% carotid steno
sis may not benefit from carotid endarterectomy. Validation of the predicti
ve score is needed on external datasets, but risk-factor modelling could be
useful to identify those patients in whom endarterectomy will be beneficia
l.