PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Test for blocked neck arteries only necessary for people with stroke risk factors

ASA/ACCF/AHA/AANN/AANS/ACR/ASNR/CNS/SAIP/SCAI/SIR/SNIS/SVM/SVS guidelines

2011-02-01
(Press-News.org) Widespread screening or routine ultrasound for blocked neck arteries to determine stroke risk isn't necessary, according to new guidelines from the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association, American College of Cardiology and other groups. Carotid stenting and carotid endarterectomy are reasonable and effective ways to treat blocked neck arteries, though some patients may be a better candidate for one procedure over the other, the guidelines also state. When the carotid arteries on the side of the neck or vertebral arteries alongside the spinal column become clogged, less blood gets to the brain and the risk of stroke increases. The guidelines writing committee, which included a wide range of specialists on stroke prevention, agreed there isn't sufficient evidence of benefit for widespread screening. "However, if your doctor hears abnormal blood flow when listening to your neck arteries, or if you have two or more risk factors for stroke (such as high cholesterol or a family history), then it is a reasonable approach," said Jonathan L. Halperin, M.D., co-chair of the writing committee and Professor of Medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. "The guidelines will provide new information and evidence to help clinicians select treatment approaches with their patients," said Thomas G. Brott, M.D., committee co-chair, Professor of Neurology and director of research at the Mayo Clinic campus in Jacksonville, Fla. Stroke risk factors include age, family history of stroke, high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, diabetes, obesity, atrial fibrillation, physical inactivity, sickle cell disease and other heart or blood vessel diseases. Among dozens of recommendations, the writing group also noted that two often competing procedures are used to restore adequate blood flow to the brain past severely narrowed arteries. In carotid endarterectomy, used for half a century, plaque buildup is surgically removed. In stenting, which has been available for about 15 years, a balloon catheter is inserted to open the vessel and a metal mesh tube (stent) is left in place to keep the blood vessel open. After reviewing the evidence, including two recent head-to-head comparisons, the writing committee concluded that both approaches are reasonable and safe when arteries are more than 50 percent blocked. "The guidelines support carotid surgery as a tried-and-true treatment for most patients," Brott said. "However, for patients who have a strong preference for less invasive treatments, carotid stenting offers a safe alternative. Because of the anatomy of their arteries or other individual considerations, some patients may be more appropriate for surgery and others for stenting." Furthermore, medications offer a better alternative than either surgery or stenting for many patients, according to the guidelines. In the latest clinical trials comparing the procedures, all patients received optimal medical treatment and there were no medication-only groups. "The risks of these procedures have fallen considerably, but you need to make sure you have very experienced practitioners performing the latest techniques," Halperin said. INFORMATION:

The full text of the guidelines will be published in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association; Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association, and Journal of the American College of Cardiology. The guideline executive summary will be in Catheterization and Cardiovascular Interventions, Journal of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography, Journal of NeuroInterventional Surgery, Journal of Vascular Surgery, and Vascular Medicine. The guidelines were developed with the American Association of Neuroscience Nurses; American Association of Neurological Surgeons; American Society of Neuroradiology; American College of Radiology; Congress of Neurological Surgeons; Society for Atherosclerosis Imaging and Prevention; Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions; Society of Interventional Radiology; Society for NeuroInterventional Surgery; Society for Vascular Medicine; and Society for Vascular Surgery. The American Academy of Neurology and the Society of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography collaborated in the process. Co-authors on the writing committee are: Suhny Abbara, M.D.; J. Michael Bacharach, M.D.; John D. Barr, M.D.; Ruth L. Bush, M.D., M.P.H.; Christopher U. Cates, M.D.; Mark A. Creager, M.D.; Susan B. Fowler, Ph.D.; Gary Friday, M.D.; Vicki S. Hertzberg, Ph.D.; E. Bruce McIff, M.D.; Wesley S. Moore, M.D.; Peter D. Panagos, M.D.; Thomas S. Riles, M.D.; Robert H. Rosenwasser, M.D.; and Allen J. Taylor, M.D. Author disclosures are on the manuscript.

The American Heart Association/American Stroke Association receives funding primarily from individuals. In addition, foundations and corporations – including pharmaceutical, device manufacturers and other companies – make donations and fund specific American Heart Association/American Stroke Association programs and events. Revenues from pharmaceutical and device corporations are disclosed at www.americanheart.org.



ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

MIT: Understanding the autistic mind

2011-02-01
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- A study from MIT neuroscientists reveals that high-functioning autistic adults appear to have trouble using theory of mind to make moral judgments in certain situations. Specifically, the researchers found that autistic adults were more likely than non-autistic subjects to blame someone for accidentally causing harm to another person. This shows that their judgments rely more on the outcome of the incident than on an understanding of the person's intentions, says Liane Young, an MIT postdoctoral associate and one of the lead authors of the study, which ...

Wilful neglect of any patient should be criminal offense for doctors and nurses

2011-02-01
The wilful neglect of any patient should become a criminal offence for doctors and nurses in England, as it is in France, suggest ethicists in a leading article published online in the Journal of Medical Ethics. Normally, healthcare professionals in England can only face prosecution if a serious error results in the death of a patient, say the authors from the University of Manchester's Centre for Social Ethics and Policy. But under current mental health legislation, nurses, doctors, and managers can be charged with the criminal offence of wilful neglect, which is ...

Head injury can blight survival up to 13 years later

2011-02-01
A head injury can blight the chances of survival up to 13 years after the event, especially among younger adults, finds research published online in the Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery and Psychiatry. Injury severity seems to make little difference over the longer term, the findings show. The research team tracked over 2,000 people, 757 of whom had sustained a head injury that required admission to one of five hospitals in Glasgow between 1995 and 1996. The rest of the group were split between those who had been admitted to hospital for other reasons, but for the ...

Dogs can accurately sniff out early stage bowel cancer

2011-02-01
Dogs can sniff out bowel cancer in breath and stool samples, with a very high degree of accuracy - even in the early stages of the disease - reveals research published online in the journal Gut. The findings prompt the authors to suggest that chemical compounds for specific cancers circulate throughout the body, which opens up the prospect of developing tests to pick up the disease before it has had the chance to spread elsewhere. A specially trained Labrador retriever completed 74 sniff tests, each comprising five breath (100 to 200 ml) or stool samples (50 ml) at ...

Altered cell metabolism has role in brain tumor development

2011-02-01
DURHAM, N.C. – Scientists at Duke Cancer Institute have discovered that genetic mutations found in brain tumors can alter tumor metabolism. This work could help lead to new designs for anti-cancer drugs based on the unique properties of these tumors. "Malignant glioma appears to be at least two large subclasses of diseases – one that involves mutations in the IDH1 and IDH2 genes and one that doesn't," said Hai Yan, M.D., Ph.D., an associate professor in the Duke Department of Pathology who led a collaborative group of researchers to conduct the study. "The IDH mutation ...

NYU neuroscientists find memory storage, reactivation process more complex than previously thought

2011-02-01
The process we use to store memories is more complex than previously thought, New York University neuroscientists have found. Their research, which appears in the journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, underscores the challenges in addressing memory-related ailments, such as post-traumatic stress disorder. The researchers looked at memory consolidation and reconsolidation. Memory consolidation is the neurological process we undergo to store memories after an experience. However, memory is dynamic and changes when new experiences bring to mind old ...

Childhood obesity linked to health habits, not heredity: U-M study

2011-02-01
ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Are some children genetically tuned to be overweight, or is lifestyle to blame for childhood obesity? Check-ups of 1,003 Michigan 6th graders in a school-based health program showed children who are obese were more likely to consume school lunch instead of a packed lunch from home and spend two hours a day watching TV or playing a video game. The results were compiled by the University of Michigan Cardiovascular Center and suggests unhealthy habits are feeding the childhood obesity trend. "For the extremely overweight child, genetic screening may ...

When 2 rights make a wrong: Combating childhood heart disease

2011-02-01
When the body can't distinguish its right side from its left during development, a child can develop a condition called heterotaxy in which the heart is severely malformed, leading to congenital heart disease. To improve survival in these children, researchers at Yale School of Medicine sought to identify the genes that cause heterotaxy. They have shown in a new study that patients with heterotaxy have considerably more copy number variations (CNVs) on their genomes than do control patients. The findings are published January 31 in Proceedings of the National Academy ...

If junk DNA is useful, why is it not shared more equally?

2011-02-01
The presence of introns in genes requires cells to process "messenger RNA" molecules before synthesizing proteins, a process that is costly and often error-prone. It was long believed that this was simply part of the price organisms paid for the flexibility to create new types of protein but recent work has made it clear that introns themselves have a number of important functions. And so attention is gradually shifting to asking why some organisms have so few introns and others so many. It seems likely that new introns are added to DNA when double-stranded DNA breaks ...

Detecting lethal diseases with rust and sand

2011-02-01
The next big thing in medical diagnostics could be minutes particles of rust, iron oxide, coated with the material from which sand is formed, silicon dioxide. These magnetic nanoparticles, a mere 29 to 230 nanometers across, can be used to trap antibodies to the virus that causes cervical cancer and to the bacteria that causes potentially lethal diarrhea. According to scientists in Vietnam, it is relatively straightforward to immobilize on nanoparticles, synthetic or monoclonal antibodies that respond to the human papilloma virus, HPV18, and the toxic gut microbe Escherichia ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Underserved youth less likely to visit emergency department for concussion in Ontario, study finds

‘Molecular shield’ placed in the nose may soon treat common hay fever trigger

Beetles under climate stress lay larger male eggs: Wolbachia infection drives adaptive reproduction strategy in response to rising temperature and CO₂

Groundbreaking quantum study puts wave-particle duality to work

Weekly injection could be life changing for Parkinson’s patients

Toxic metals linked to impaired growth in infants in Guatemala

Being consistently physically active in adulthood linked to 30–40% lower risk of death

Nerve pain drug gabapentin linked to increased dementia, cognitive impairment risks

Children’s social care involvement common to nearly third of UK mums who died during perinatal period

‘Support, not judgement’: Study explores links between children’s social care involvement and maternal deaths

Ethnic minority and poorer children more likely to die in intensive care

Major progress in fertility preservation after treatment for cancer of the lymphatic system

Fewer complications after additional ultrasound in pregnant women who feel less fetal movement

Environmental impact of common pesticides seriously underestimated

The Milky Way could be teeming with more satellite galaxies than previously thought

New study reveals surprising reproductive secrets of a cricket-hunting parasitoid fly

Media Tip Sheet: Symposia at ESA2025

NSF CAREER Award will power UVA engineer’s research to improve drug purification

Tiny parasitoid flies show how early-life competition shapes adult success

New coating for glass promises energy-saving windows

Green spaces boost children’s cognitive skills and strengthen family well-being

Ancient trees dying faster than expected in Eastern Oregon

Study findings help hone precision of proven CVD risk tool

Most patients with advanced melanoma who received pre-surgical immunotherapy remain alive and disease free four years later

Introducing BioEmu: A generative AI Model that enables high-speed and accurate prediction of protein structural ensembles

Replacing mutated microglia with healthy microglia halts progression of genetic neurological disease in mice and humans

New research shows how tropical plants manage rival insect tenants by giving them separate ‘flats’

Condo-style living helps keep the peace inside these ant plants

Climate change action could dramatically limit rising UK heatwave deaths

Annual heat-related deaths projected to increase significantly due to climate and population change

[Press-News.org] Test for blocked neck arteries only necessary for people with stroke risk factors
ASA/ACCF/AHA/AANN/AANS/ACR/ASNR/CNS/SAIP/SCAI/SIR/SNIS/SVM/SVS guidelines