[Myocardial risk in patients undergoing carotid intervention. Medium-term follow-up]

We have evaluated the cardiac risk for 212 patients who underwent internal carotid surgery (245 operations). The mean age at the time of operation was of 63 +/- 8 years. A complete pre-operative cardiac assessment was performed splitting the patients in two groups: one considered as having a coronary heart disease (CHD) and the other as "healthy heart" (HH). The peri-operative cardiac morbidity and mortality rate were low (CHD group: 16.88%; HH group: 2.22%). At a 2 years follow-up we notice 31% of cardiac problems in the CHD group (with a mortality rate of 5.7%) for 3.9% in the HH group (with a mortality rate of 3.9%). The 4 years follow-up gives similar results.