Symptomatic intracranial vertebral artery atherosclerotic stenosis (≥70%) with concurrent contralateral vertebral atherosclerotic diseases in 88 patients treated with the intracranial stenting

Center volume and the outcomes of percutaneous transluminal angioplasty and stenting in patients with symptomatic intracranial vertebrobasilar stenoses: A meta-analysis

“…After removing duplicate reports and primary screening of the included articles’ titles and abstracts 36 records were considered to be relevant. After full-text review, 15 studies [ 11 – 22 , 24 , 25 , 27 ] were finally included in the current systematic review and meta-analysis after further exclusion of 21 records that patients without IVBS, enrolled non consecutively, included patients not receiving PTAS, did not report relevant outcomes, or enrolled duplicate cohorts.…”

“…The 15 included cohort studies [ 11 – 22 , 24 , 25 , 27 ] enrolled a total of 554 symptomatic IVBS patients that underwent PTAS procedures. The characteristics of the included studies are listed in Table 1 .…”

“…Most were retrospective cohort studies, except four [ 19 , 21 , 25 , 27 ] which were prospective cohort studies. The study centers were distributed in North America [ 11 , 12 , 15 – 17 ], Europe [ 14 , 19 , 20 ], Asia [ 13 , 21 , 24 , 25 , 27 ], Argentina [ 22 ] and Australia [ 18 ]. The mean age of the included patients ranged from 59.0 to 68.3 years, and patient groups were 58.8% to 100% male.…”

“…Center volume differed significantly between studies, ranging from 2 to 97 patients per year. The early studies applied coronary stents [ 11 – 16 , 18 ] for the PTAS procedures in patients with symptomatic IVBS, while the Wingspan and Apollo stent systems were applied in more recent studies [ 21 , 24 , 25 , 27 ]. The quality of the included studies was generally optimal, with quality scores ranging from 4 to 5 points.…”

Delayed Endovascular Stenting for Severe Vertebral Artery Stenosis with Precarious Thrombosis

“…There is still disagreement about how to approach patients with atherosclerotic pathology of the posterior circulation, namely, the vertebrobasilar system [5-7]. There is a high risk of stroke recurrence within this system (8.5 - 22% per year), even after medical intervention [8-9].…”