The role of heparin in preventing the early silent ischemia in carotid stenting

Abstract

Introduction and aims

Serebral silent ischemia is a complication of carotid stenting. If silent ischemia occurs 24 h later of carotid stenting, it called early serebral silent ischemia. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of heparin infusion on the prevention of early silent ischemia in patients who underwent carotid stenting.

Materials and methods

We included 26 patients who underwent carotid stenting. Patients who had carotid stenting, we randomized into two groups. The first group of patients were given continuously heparin infusion a maximum of 20,000 units for 24 h, and screened the aPTT value each 6 h. The aPTT value aimed a range of 2–3 times to up baseline. The second group didn’t take heparin infusion. Diffusion weighted magnetic resonance imaging (DWI-MRI) and gradient echo (GRE) sequences performed in all patients at the 24 h of carotid stenting.

Results

Early serebral silent ischemia was detected by DWI-MRI in 13 (50%) of 26 patients who underwent carotid stenting. Seven (53.80%) of 13 patients whit early serebral silent ischemia did not receive heparin treatment, while 6 (46.20%) received heparin treatment. There was no symptomatic or asymptomatic acute hemorrhage in patients who treated with heparin.

Conclusion

In our study, the continuation of anticoagulant therapy for 24 h to prevent early silent ischemia was not statistically significant. Also there is no reduction for count of serebral silent ischemia between two groups. However, due to the small number of patients in the study, future studies are required with more patients.

Keywords:

• Early cerebral silent ischemia
• heparin
• carotid stenting

Compliance with ethical standards

Our study has the approval of the ethics committee of local ethical statements dated 24.07.2017 and numbered 40/08.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).