Carotid Artery Stenting in Clinical Practice: Does Sex Matter? Results From the Carotid Artery Stenting Registry of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Leitende Kardiologische Krankenhausarzte (ALKK)

Background: Carotid artery stenting (CAS) is increasingly used for treatment of severe carotid artery stenosis, but only few procedural risk factors for complications of CAS are clearly defined yet. A possible impact of the patient's gender on the outcome of patients undergoing CAS has not been investigated properly and only little information about this topic is available so far. Methods: We analysed data of the German prospective, multicenter CAS Registry of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft leitende kardiologische Krankenhausarzte. Results: From July 1996 to May 2009 5130 patients underwent CAS at 35 German hospitals and were enrolled into the prospective ALKK CAS Registry. Therefrom 1443 (28.1%) patients were female. There was no significant time-related difference in the proportion of women undergoing CAS over the years. Women undergoing CAS were significantly older than men (73 years vs. 70 years, p < 0.01) and had a longer in hospital stay in comparison to men (p < 0.01). The majority of patients treated with CAS was between 60 and 80 years of age (similar to 73%). No significant differences between women and men could be found regarding in-hospital events like death (0.5% vs. 0.5%, p = 0.99), major or minor stroke (1.7% vs. 1.6%, p = 0.97; 1.0% vs. 1.6%, p = 0.12), TIA (2.8% vs. 2.6%, p = 0.64), amaurosis fugax (0.3% vs. 0.5%, p = 0.25), intracranial bleeding (0.5% vs. 0.3%, p = 0.43), myocardial infarction (0.1% vs. 0.0%, p = 0.48) or all non-fatal strokes and all death (3.0% the outcome of patients undergoing CAS, as well (female n = 31/882 [3.5%] vs. male n = 109/ 2273 [4.8%], p = 0.12). Conclusion: Our results do not suggest any gender-related differences in success rates and complications in CAS. In clinical practice approximately 30% of patients treated with CAS are women.