Long-term outcome in extracranial-intracranial bypass surgery for severe steno-occlusive disease of intracranial internal carotid or middle cerebral artery.

OBJECTIVES: We report the long-term outcome and rates of recurrent cerebral ischemic events in our cohort of carefully selected patients after STA-MCA bypass for severe steno-occlusive disease of intracranial ICA or MCA with exhausted cerebral vasodilatory reserve.

PATIENTS AND METHODS: In this retrospective study, we reviewed the hospital records for all patients who underwent direct superficial temporal artery-middle cerebral artery bypass surgery at our institution from January 2010 to August 2017. Patients were included in the study if they presented with transient ischemic attack or non-disabling stroke due to a severe steno-occlusive lesions of the intracranial internal carotid artery or middle cerebral artery with abnormal cerebral vasodilatory reserve on imaging. The overall event rate is defined as transient ischemic attack, acute ischemic stroke, peri-operative stroke or death.

RESULTS: 69 patients were included in the study. The median age of cohort was 57 years (inter-quartile range 36-78). Median follow up period in our study was 73 months (range 2-90 months). The overall event rate post-treatment during the follow up period is 20.2%. In contrast, previous studies have showed that patients who underwent best medical therapy had a higher recurrent ischemic stroke rate over a 2-3-year period.

CONCLUSION: This study suggests that carefully selected patients with severe steno-occlusive disease and significantly abnormal cerebral hemodynamic reserve who undergo extracranial-intracranial bypass surgery, may benefit from long-term prevention of symptomatic cerebral ischemic events.