Elective stenting of symptomatic middle cerebral artery stenosis

Percutaneous balloon angioplasty has been found to be useful for the treatm ent of intracranial atherosclerotic arterial stenosis, Nonetheless, an ongo ing risk of this procedure is arterial dissection, which increases the haza rds of acute closure, stroke, and restenosis. Stenting of the intracranial vasculature recently has been shown to be feasible in a variety of circumst ances. To our knowledge, however, stenting of the middle cerebral artery ha s not been possible until now primarily because of difficulty with tracking stents across the carotid siphon. We describe the successful treatment of a symptomatic middle cerebral artery stenosis achieved using a balloon-expa ndable flexible coronary stent.