Efficacy and safety of preoperative embolization in carotid body tumor treatment: A propensity score matching retrospective cohort study

Abstract

Background To assess the efficacy and safety of preoperative embolization (PE) in patients with carotid body tumor (CBTs). Methods In a single‐center retrospective cohort study, 127 patients underwent surgical resection of CBTs from January 2003 to December 2019. One‐to‐one propensity score matching was conducted between patients with or without PE. Results Thirty‐two (25.2%) patients received PE. After propensity score matching, no statistically significant differences were found in the baseline characteristics of 28 patients in each group. Compared with NPE group, operative time and estimated blood loss (EBL) were significantly reduced in the PE group. The incidence of stroke, perioperative complications, intraoperative blood transfusion, vascular reconstruction, hospital stay, tumor recurrence, and all‐cause mortality were not different between the PE and NPE group. Conclusions Preoperative embolization was efficient and safe with a reduction of intraoperative blood loss and operative time during CBT resection.

Beneficial effects of preoperative superselective embolization on carotid body tumor surgery: A 13-year single-center experience

“…Stroke is a complication that severely affects the quality of life of patients. In agreement with the literature (1,11,14,33), the stroke associated with the procedures did not show any statistical difference between the two groups in our study. Interestingly, all the stroke cases were patients who underwent carotid reconstruction procedures and the incidence of stroke was higher in the surgical resection without embolization group, which once again demonstrated the importance of pre-TAE.…”

“…Preoperative transarterial embolization (pre-TAE) decreased the overall blood loss (BL) and improved visualization at surgery, thus facilitating tumor resection, which was first introduced by Schick et al in 1980 (9). Since then, several studies have evaluated the impact of pre-TAE on CBT surgery (4,(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17). The results demonstrated that pre-TAE is an effective and safe adjunct for surgical resection that can reduce BL and operative time during surgery and decrease the risk of perioperative complications, especially for Shamblin class II/III tumors.…”