Asymptomatic Carotid Stenosis: High Risk With Suboptimal Treatment: Re: Five Year Outcomes in Men Screened for Carotid Artery Stenosis at 65 Years of Age: A Population Based Cohort Study

[Asymptomatic carotid stenosis: What is new?]

In industrialized countries, stroke is still the most common disease that leads to permanent disability. Of the 250 000 strokes that occur annually in Germany, in about 80 % are cerebral ischemia. Approximately 15 % of these ischemias are caused by lesions of the extracranial internal carotid artery, so optimal treatment of extracranial carotid stenosis is essential 1. This continues to be the subject of a controversial debate, as optimized drug therapy has led to a significant reduction in risk.In 2020, the multidisciplinary S3 guideline for the management of extracranial carotid stenoses was updated. In the following, current aspects and new recommendations for asymptomatic carotid stenosis are presented and important innovations of the guideline are explained.

Management of asymptomatic carotid stenosis

Patients with asymptomatic carotid stenosis (ACS) are at very high risk of coronary events, so they should all receive intensive medical therapy. What is often accepted as “best medical therapy” is usually suboptimal. Truly intensive medical therapy includes lifestyle modification, particularly smoking cessation and a Mediterranean diet. All patients with ACS should receive intensive lipid-lowering therapy, should have their blood pressure well controlled, and should receive B vitamins for lowering of plasma total homocysteine (tHcy) if levels are high; a commonly missed cause of elevated tHcy is metabolic B12 deficiency, which should be diagnosed and treated. Most patients with ACS would be better treated with intensive medical therapy than with either carotid endarterectomy (CEA) or stenting (CAS). A process called “treating arteries instead of treating risk factors” markedly reduced the risk of ACS in an observational study; a randomized trial vs. usual care should be carried out. The few patients with ACS who could benefit (~15%, or perhaps more if recent evidence regarding the risk of intraplaque hemorrhage is borne out) can be identified by a number of features. These include microemboli on transcranial Doppler, intraplaque hemorrhage, reduced cerebrovascular reserve, and echolucency of plaques, particularly “juxtaluminal black plaque”. No patient should be subjected to CAS or CEA without evidence of high-risk features, because in most cases the 1-year risk of stroke or death with intervention is higher with either CEA (~2%) or CAS (~4%) than with intensive medical therapy (~0.5%). Most patients, particularly the elderly, would be better treated with CEA than CAS. Most strokes can be prevented in patients with ACS, but truly intensive medical therapy is required.