Endovascular Therapy for Acute Basilar Artery Occlusion: Comparison between Patients with and without Underlying Intracranial Atherosclerotic Stenosis

Abstract

급성 기저동맥 폐색의 원인으로는 기존의 두개내 동맥경화 Purpose:To compare the characteristics and outcomes of multimodal endovascular therapy (EVT) in patients with acute basilar artery occlusion (BAO) with and without underlying intracranial atherosclerotic stenosis (ICAS). Materials and Methods:We retrospectively analyzed the data from 50 patients with acute BAO who were treated with EVT. The baseline characteristics and outcomes of patients with and without ICAS were compared. Patients with ICAS underwent intracranial angioplasty or stenting after mechanical thrombectomy. Results: Thirty percent of the patients (15/50) had underlying ICAS at the occlusion site. On pretreatment diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI), bilateral thalamic infarction was less frequently found in patients with ICAS (0% vs. 25.7%, p = 0.03). Occlusion in the proximal segment of the basilar artery was more common in patients with ICAS (60% vs. 5.7%, p < 0.001), whereas occlusion in the distal segment of the basilar artery was more common in patients without ICAS (26.7% vs. 91.4%, p < 0.001). There were no significant differences in the rates of successful revascularization, 3-month modified Rankin Scale scores of 0-2, symptomatic hemorrhage, and mortality between the two groups. Conclusion: ICAS was common in patients with acute stroke due to BAO. The occlusion site and the presence or absence of bilateral thalamic infarction on pretreatment DWI might help predict the underlying ICAS in patients with acute BAO. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Index terms