A 61-year-old man underwent a left cervical internal carotid artery stenting following a recent ischemic stroke. Postoperative angiography was satisfactory and did not reveal any in-stent filling defect (figure 1A). Optical coherence tomography (OCT) probe was used to visualize the endoluminal area following stenting. OCT confirmed optimum placement of the stent and reveled a small plaque protrusion from the stent struts following deployment (figure 1B).
Figure 1. Postoperative findings.
(A) Satisfactory poststent angiography without filling defect detected. (B) Two endoluminal cross-sectional optical coherence tomography images demonstrate the absence of any plaque protrusions within the stent struts (white arrowheads) and plaque protrusion between the stent struts (blue arrowhead) at a different zone.
OCT offers the advantage of obtaining very high spatial resolution in real time of the artery lumen (figure 2). OCT can be a useful adjunct to diagnose in-stent plaque protrusions that are difficult to visualize in digital subtraction angiography.1,2
Figure 2. 3D reconstruction.
3D reconstruction of the left cervical internal carotid artery using optical coherence tomography images before and after stenting. Plaque protrusion between the stent struts is marked with asterisk and arrowhead. CCA = common carotid artery; ECA = external carotid artery; ICA = internal carotid artery.
Author contributions
Conception and design, acquisition of data, analysis and interpretation of data: All authors. Drafting the article: Drs. Alotaibi and Yang. Critically revising the article: Dr. Yang. Approved the final version of the manuscript on behalf of all authors: Dr. Yang.
Study funding
No targeted funding reported.
Disclosure
The authors report no disclosures relevant to the manuscript. Go to Neurology.org/N for full disclosures.
References
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