Locoregional Versus General Anesthesia for Carotid Artery Stenting in the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Project.

Objectives: Carotid artery stenting (CAS) may be performed by transfemoral or transcervical (TCAR) approaches and with a variety of anesthetic techniques. No current literature clearly supports one anesthetic method over another. We therefore sought to evaluate the outcomes of CAS procedures based on anesthetic approach.

Design: Retrospective cohort study.

Setting: American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program database from 2011 to 2018.

Participants: All individuals undergoing CAS during the study period.

Interventions: Anesthetic type (locoregional versus general [GA]).

Measurements And Main Results: Locoregional anesthesia for CAS was used for 754 (65.5%) patients, with the remainder under GA. Demographic variables were comparable, as were the incidence of symptomatic presentation, high-risk anatomy or physiology, severity of the stenosis, and presence/severity of contralateral carotid disease. There was no difference in composite outcome (stroke, myocardial infarction [MI], and death) (7.0% v 6.1%, p = 0.53). The GA group had lower odds ratio of MI (0.12, p = 0.0362) but higher odds ratio of death (3.33, p = 0.008) and postoperative pneumonia (3.87, p = 0.0083), although on multivariable analysis the risk of death appeared confounded by respiratory variables. Multivariable and propensity score-weighted analyses did not identify a significant association of GA with the composite outcome.

Conclusions: In patients undergoing CAS in the National Surgical Quality Improvement Program, GA was not associated with the composite outcome but was associated with increased rates of postoperative pneumonia and decreased rates of MI. Further investigation should attempt to better clarify these relationships.