Endovascular treatment of extracranial carotid artery aneurysms

The objective of this article was to give a comprehensive overview over the different etiologies and the current techniques and results of endovascular treatment of aneurysms of the extracranial carotid artery. Extracranial carotid artery aneurysms are characterized by a low incidence but a high stroke rate in case of conservative management. Open surgical treatment has the disadvantage of a high percentage of postoperative cranial nerve injury and morbidity due to the cervical exposure. Endovascular treatment is attractive because of its less invasiveness. Due to the large variety of etiologies and different endovascular treatment approaches no comparative trials or even large retrospective studies do exist to determine the optimal treatment for the disease. This is a non-systematic review of clinical case series and retrospective analysis about endovascular treatment of extracranial carotid artery aneurysms in English literature.