Physician-initiated prospective Italian Registry of carotid stenting with the C-Guard mesh-stent: the IRON-Guard registry. Rationale and design.

According to the World Health Organization, every year, 5 million peoples die for stroke and another 5 million are permanently disabled. Although there are many causes of acute stroke, a common treatable cause of acute stroke is atheromatous narrowing at the carotid bifurcation. Carotid endarterectomy is still the standard of car, even if carotid artery stenting (CAS) has become an effective, less invasive alterantive. Unfortunately, CAS procedure is not yet perfect; regardless the use of an embolic protection device (EPD), percutaneous treatment has been correlated with a risk of cerebral ischemic events related to distal embolization. The objective of the IRON-Guard Registry is to evaluate the clinical outcome of treatment by means of stenting with the C-Guard (InspireMD, Boston, MA, USA) in subjects requiring CAS due to significant extracranial carotid artery stenosis with a physician-initiated, Italian, prospective, multicenter, single-arm study. A total of 200 enrolled subjects divided over different centers are planned to be enrolled. CAS will performed by implanting of C-Guard stent. Procedure will be performed according to the physician's standard of care. Standard procedures will be followed based on the Instructions for Use, for the C-Guard device of Inspire. The primary endpoint of this study is the 30-day rate of major adverse events (MAE), defined as the cumulative incidence of any periprocedural (≤30 days postprocedure) death, stroke or myocardial infarction. Secondary endpoints are rate of late ipsilateral stroke (31 through 365 days), system technical success, device malfunctions, major adverse events (MAEs), serious device-related and procedure-related adverse events, target lesion revascularization, and in-stent restenosis rates.

Secondary procedures in thoracic aorta.

Secondary procedures for thoracic aorta are very demanding to the patient, with significantly high perioperative mortality and morbidity. The aim of this paper was to review the most remarkable secondary procedures following open and endorepairs of thoracic aorta. The PubMed database was searched without any year limits. Search terms used %were "thoracic", "aorta" and "reintervention". Two authors independently reviewed abstracts identified by the search and subsequently the reference lists of eligible series were scrutinized in order to detect any additional relevant articles. Different early and late complications following open an endovascular repair of thoracic aorta were described adding their incidence and their potential solutions with secondary interventions. Secondary interventions after open repair (OR) are more related to bleeding and progression of the aortic disease issues and open surgery is again the most common solution. However, in more fragile patients with favorable anatomy, endovascular repair can be offered as a secondary procedure. Reinterventions after endovascular treatment of thoracic aorta diseases (TEVAR) are mostly related to endoleaks and also to the aortic disease progression. Hopefully, the oncoming technological improvements together with the optimized operator expertise can reduce the incidence of secondary procedures following TEVAR for all the aortic pathologies.

Current technology for the treatment of infection following abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) fixation by endovascular repair (EVAR).

In recent years, in parallel with the increase of endovascular aortic repair (EVAR) procedures performances, a rise of late open surgical removal of EVAR implants has been observed, due to non-endovascularly correctable graft complications. Among them endograft infection is a rare but devastating occurrence, accounting for an incidence ranging from 0.2% to 0.7% in major series, and almost 1% of all causes of endograft explantations. However, a real estimation of the incidence of the problem respect to the number of EVAR implantations is difficult to obtain. Time to infection is usually defined as the period between EVAR and presentation of symptoms that leads to the infection diagnosis. It can be extremely variable, depending on bacterial virulence and host conditions. The diagnosis of an endograft infection is usually based on a combination of clinical symptoms, imaging studies and microbial cultures whenever possible. If computed tomography (CT) scan is employed in almost 100% of infection diagnosis, a combination of fluorodeoxyglucose-positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) and CT scan is nowadays used with increasing frequency in order to rise the likelihood of detecting a graft infection, since even cultures of blood or samples collected from the infected field can sometimes be negative. Complete graft excision seems the best approach whenever a surgical reconstruction could be attempted. In situ reconstruction can be performed by the interposition of an autologous vein, a cryopreserved allograft or a rifampin-soaked Dacron graft. The so-called conventional treatment contemplates the re-establishment of vascularization through extranatomical routes, thus preserving the new graft material from possible contamination by the surgical field just cleaned. When severe comorbid conditions did not allow graft excision, a conservative treatment should be taken into account. It is mainly based on broad-spectrum or culture-specific antibiotic therapy combined, whenever possible, with percutaneous drainage of the infectious cavity or aneurismal sac followed by irrigation with saline and antibiotic solutions. New techniques of percutaneous drainage under CT scan guidance can allow expedite collection of fluid material for microbial culture or fluid drainage, catheter positioning to collect infectious material from the cavity and perform irrigation of the infected field or injection of iodine contrast when the suspicion of aortoenteric fistula exists.

An atypical case of contrast-induced encephalopathy after carotid artery stenting.

Neurotoxicity caused by contrast agents is a rare and less known complication of percutaneous carotid and coronary interventions. Radiological signs, such as cortical enhancement and brain edema, are of utmost importance in diagnosis. A 70-year-old female patient underwent left carotid artery stenting to treat a post-traumatic asymptomatic carotid dissection. Three hours after intervention, a mild aphasia developed with no brain alteration on diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (DW-MRI). Twelve hours after intervention, symptoms worsened but a new DW-MRI scan showed no pathological findings. Since a contrast-induced encephalopathy was diagnosed, fluid administration was raised to 2 mL/kg/h and the neurological status progressively improved. In the following three days, neurological deficit slowly regressed. Two weeks after intervention, aphasia had disappeared and a further cerebral DW-MRI scan detected no brain alteration. Typical radiological signs are described in association to contrast encephalopathy. Nevertheless, vascular interventional physicians should be well aware of this condition also when those signs are lacking.

Total knee replacement: prevention of deep-vein thrombosis using pharmacological (low-molecular-weight heparin) and mechanical (intermittent foot sole pump system) combined prophylaxis. Preliminary results.

AIM: The aim of this study was to determine the role of combined mechanical and pharmacological prophylaxis in the prevention of deep venous thrombosis (DVT) after total knee replacement (TKR). DESIGN: prospective case series study. METHODS: Between October 2002 and June 2003, 38 total knee procedures were carried out on 34 patients (4 patients had bilateral TKR). To exclude the presence of a concomitant DVT echo-color-flow of the legs was performed between 2 and 1 week prior to surgery, in the postoperative period (before discharging) and 30 days after surgery. Patients received one daily subcutaneous injection of nadroparin calcium (dosage adapted to body-weight). An intermittent foot sole pump (IFSP) was applied in the recovery room postoperatively, in both feet for about 5 h a day and all night long, and continued at home until the 15(th) day. RESULTS: No major perioperative or rehabilitation phase-related complications were observed (2 patients required manual drainage of blood clots from the wound). The incidence of DVT was 7.9% (3 cases). In one of these cases we observed a previous DVT so it was classified as rethrombosis. All were successfully treated with therapeutic introduced low molecular weight heparin (LMWH) therapy. No pulmonary embolism or deaths associated with the use of LMWH or IFSP were observed. CONCLUSIONS: In our experience the combined prophylaxis with nadroparin calcium and IFSP significantly reduced the incidence of DVT.