[Cerebral ischemia during carotid clamping: diagnosis and prevention]

A serious complication in carotid endarterectomy (CEA) is the occurrence or aggravation of neurological deficits caused by insufficient collateral cerebral blood flow during cross-clamping. At the moment, patients with failure of collateral circulation at this point cannot be identified preoperatively. Thus, intraoperative monitoring and methods to prevent clamping-related cerebral ischemia are required. To put this strategy into clinical practice there are several methods of monitoring cerebral function (e.g. surgery performed in awake patients, electroencephalography, somatosensory evoked potentials), changes of hemodynamic (e.g. carotid stump pressure, transcranial Doppler ultrasonography) or metabolic parameters (e.g. jugular bulb oximetry or transcranial oximetry). One technique that meets nearly all requirements of an ideal monitoring under general anesthesia is the use of somatosensory evoked potentials (SEPs). Registration of SEPs is simple to perform and indicates with a high sensitivity and specificity critical cerebral hypoperfusion during cross-clamping. Thus, SEPs monitoring indicates the necessity of shunt placement. As a result, the use of an indwelling shunt as the most effective method to prevent clamping ischemia can be limited to selected cases, avoiding the risks of shunting in patients with sufficient collateral flow. In addition, correct shunt function is immediately indicated by recovering potentials. Whether a combination of SEPs with transcranial Doppler measurements will be successful to provide additional information about cerebral embolisation should be determined.