Safety and mid-term outcome of endovascular therapy for internal carotid artery disease: a 15-year experience at a single-centre angiology institution.

Background: Endovascular therapy of carotid artery disease has emerged as a potential alternative to endarterectomy and its clinical practise dramatically increased in many parts of the world. This study aims to determine the safety and mid-term outcome of carotid artery stenting (CAS) within a 15-year carotid program at a single-centre institution.

Patients And Methods: We retrospectively analysed all CAS-procedures performed at our institution between 1995 and 2009.

A comprehensive approach to visual and functional assessment of experimental vascular lesions in vivo.

The rat carotid injury model is the most widely used model to study the pathophysiology of neointimal hyperplasia as well as the value of novel therapeutic approaches to limit vasoproliferative diseases such as restenosis. For lesion assessment, the current gold standard of histomorphometry neither provides integral insight into the vascular lesion in vivo nor assesses of functional lesion-associated flow alterations and the time course of lesion development. To overcome these limitations, we applied and validated duplex sonography as a novel tool for comprehensive lesions assessment in vivo.

A central role of interferon regulatory factor-1 for the limitation of neointimal hyperplasia.

Neointima formation, the leading cause of restenosis after catheter angioplasty, is a paradigm for vascular proliferative responses. Neointima formation is self-limiting after a variable degree of tissue growth, causing significant renarrowing in a substantial number of patients. To investigate the mechanisms that limit neointima formation we studied the role of the transcription factor IRF-1, which is a regulator of interferons and a tumor suppressor.