Age should play an important role in choosing a revascularization procedure for people with blocked carotid arteries, according to a new paper published in JAMA Surgery. Carotid endarterectomy surgery (CEA) is preferable to carotid artery stenting (CAS) in elderly people; for younger patients the two revascularization procedures are broadly similar.
George Antoniou and colleagues analyzed data from 44 studies containing more than half a million CEA and 75,000 CAS procedures. In the CAS group, when compared to younger patients elderly patients were at increased risk for stroke (odds ratio 1.56,CI 1.40-1.75). In the CEA group the stroke results were “equivalent” in the older and younger groups (OR 0.94, CI 0.88-0.99). In the CEA group there was a small but statistically significant increase in the mortality rate in the older group compared with the younger group (0.5% versus 0.4%, OR 1.62, CI 1.47-1.77). No significant difference in mortality between the older and younger groups emerged in the CAS group. In both the CAS and the CEA groups, increased age was associated with a greater risk of adverse cardiac events.
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