Long-term follow-up in the endovascular treatment of intracranial aneurysms with flow-diverter stents: update of a single-centre experience

Introduction: Flow-diverter stents are becoming a useful tool in treating patients with intracranial aneurysms with suitable anatomical feature. Purpose of this study was to evaluate effectiveness and safety of endovascular treatment with flow-diverting stents (FD) in unruptured intracranial aneurysms. Methods: From May 2009 and May 2014, we treated 49 patients with a total of 58 aneurysms, with FD technique. All patients were treated electively, under general anesthesia and were administered single antiplatelet drug 5 days before the procedure and double antiplatelet therapy for 3 months afterwards. Fifteen of the patients were asymptomatic, eight had headache, thirteen patients presented symptoms due to mass effect of the aneurysm on CNS structures, twelve were treated due to a post-surgical relapse and one patient presented relapsing TIAs due to distal embolization from the aneurysm dome. Choice of FD treatment was done according to aneurysm anatomy (fusiform over saccular, dome/neck ratio < 2) and whenever conventional treatment (coil embolization) appeared difficult (eg. Large aneurysm neck, fusiform aneurysms or difficult sac catheterization). We considered a dome/neck ratio > 2 as the only exclusion criteria. Results: Successful stent deployment was achieved in 50 procedures out of 52 (94.34%) while overall mortality was 2% (1/49). Forty-eight patients were evaluated at long-term follow-up for a total of 56 treated aneurysms. At 3 months, follow-up 75% (42/56) of the aneurysms were excluded from intracranial circulation, at 6 months 80.35% (45/56) and at 12 months 84% (47/56). Stent patency was observed in 100% of patients at short and long-term follow-up, with only two cases of intimal hyperplasia at 3 months, without any further complications. Conclusions: According to our study FD repair of unruptured intracranial aneurysms appeared to be a safe and effective technique, especially in selected patients with hostile anatomy for traditional embolization.