Carotid angioplasty: is it safe?

For 15 years, balloon angioplasty has been cautiously applied to carotid artery occlusive lesions. Procedural results have, by and large, been satisfactory, but the potential for significant neurologic complications and a dearth of controlled studies with long-term follow-up have impeded the development of carotid angioplasty until recently. This review of the literature chronicles the slow but steady evolutionary pace of carotid angioplasty from its beginnings in 1980 to today's shifting focus to the use of stents.

[Severe limb ischemia due to iatrogenic trauma].

Objectives: Assess the frequency, severity and technical problems raised by iatrogenic trauma to the arteries.

Method: A retrospective study of 45 cases of iatrogenic arterial trauma treated over a 25-year period was studied.

Results: The most frequent cause was arterial catheterization (n = 32 including 24 of the lower limbs and 8 for the upper limbs) performed for arteriography (n = 16), coronarography (n = 13) or endovascular therapy (n = 3).

[Malignant triton tumor of the posterior mediastinum treated by thoracoscopic approach. Apropos of a case].

A tumour of the posterior mediastinum was removed via thoracoscopy. The histology report was a triton tumour. This is a rare (less than 80 cases reported in the literature) malignant tumour of the nervous system: malignant schwannoma with rhabdomyoblastic differentiation.