Abstract
Objective: Navigation of the guiding catheter (GC) is important in performing neuroendovascular therapy, as the GC may often disturb blood flow of the parent artery. In the present study, we aimed to examine the risk factors of mechanical vasospasm (mVS) of the parent artery during neuroendovascular therapy.
Methods: We assessed a total of 64 consecutive cases who underwent coil embolization for unruptured intracranial aneurysms. mVS was defined as a stenotic change of the parent artery of > 25% after navigating GC.
Results: mVS was observed in 24 cases (38%), and in 5 cases the GCs were changed to smaller sizes. The vasospastic changes in all the cases improved after changing the position of GC or the GC itself. Young age, female gender, and absence of hypertensive history were significantly associated with mVS. However, body mass index, adjunctive technique of coil embolization, and presence of hyper-intense lesions on diffusion weighted images were not associated with mVS.
Conclusions: We suggest that care should be taken when navigating the GCs in patients with young age, female gender, and the absence of a history of hypertension in terms of the occurrence of mVS.
