3、RESULTS
All five patients’ characteristics and previous treatments were
demonstrated on Table 1 and Table 2 . The post-stenting
angiography (Figure 1B ) demonstrated an improvement in the
appearance and caliber of the affected carotid artery. The carotid wall
could be dissected from the stent without difficulty and en blocresection of the surrounding tumor with attempted R0 resection.Figure 2A and 2B demonstrated appearance of the
covered stent in carotid artery. The mean age was 52.2 years (range,
41-60 years), and the median follow-up was 6.5 months (range, 4-9
months).After placement of the covered stent prior to surgical
resections, four patients experienced transient bradycardia (30-40
beats/min)and hypotension (50/30-70/50 mmHg).No stroke occurred in these
five patients. Intraoperatively, we noted that in two patients’ the
whole carotid artery wall was involved, in two patients’ tumor invaded
only the tunica adventitia of the carotid artery, and one other
patient’s tumor did not directly invade the carotid artery, there was
only extrinsic compression. All five patients underwent R0 resection (no
positive margins of the resection line of the specimen) and there were
no intraoperative complications .The type of tumor in all patients was
squamous cell carcinoma. Postoperatively, all patients healed because of
rich vascularity of the flap, and no infection or necrosis occurred.
Three patients underwent adjuvant radiotherapy or chemoradiation. With
median follow-up 6.5 months, one
patient died of multiple organ failures at 6.5 months after surgery; one
patient developed tracheal stoma recurrence and was treated with salvage
surgery; the three other patients had no disease recurrence at their
last follow-up. We have not observed any postoperative spontaneous
carotid artery rupture, stroke, or late graft occlusion.