Intellectual and personality changes associated with carotid endarterectomy

Abstract

Eleven patients with at least 40-50% carotid artery stenosis were given intelligence and personality tests just prior to and 6 weeks after carotid endarterectomy, a surgical procedure designed to remove arteriosclerotic blockage. When compared with 8 control patients, endarterectomy patients showed increases in Perceptual-Organization IQ, decreases in time to complete a perceptual motor task, and significant reductions in suspicion, confusion, disorientation, and other personality symptoms generally associated with senility.

Three-year neuropsychological follow-up of patients with reversible ischemic attacks

“…It seems logical to infer that intellectual impairment would be the mental counterpart to neurological signs of carotid disease. Neuropsychological impairment was also shown in other controlled studies [4,8,9,15,16,17,23] in which, however, patients were evaluated only a few days after the clearing of the neurological symptoms. Several studies seem to suggest that cognitive functions of these patients are impaired.…”

Effect of Carotid Artery Stenting on Cognitive Function in Patients With Carotid Artery Stenosis: Preliminary Results

“…Patients treated surgically for carotid artery stenosis have been shown to increase their neuropsychologic test scores and/or psychomotor speed. 7,10,12,13 Patients treated with stent placement had an increase in subjective cognitive function, as we have demonstrated previously. 8 Our patients did not show an improvement in speed of performing psychomotor tests, in contrast to the results of Grunwald et al 9 The difference may be because of the smaller number of cases in that study, a larger proportion of patients with right-sided carotid artery stenosis, or different neuropsychologic tests used to measure speed.…”

“…[2][3][4][5][6] Evidence is accumulating that revascularization of a carotid stenosis may improve cognitive performance. [7][8][9][10][11][12][13] Subjective evaluation of patients who had stent placement of the carotid or vertebrobasilar system suggests improved cognitive function after treatment. 8 Objective measures evaluating the speed of cognitive functioning improved in 1 group of 10 patients studied before and after stent placement.…”

“…8 Objective measures evaluating the speed of cognitive functioning improved in 1 group of 10 patients studied before and after stent placement. 9 Endarterectomy in patients with carotid stenosis resulted in improved scores on psychomotor and cognitive tests 10 but can result in cognitive decline if operative ischemia is encountered.…”

Psychological impact of carotid endarterectomy: A review of the studies

“…[13,22,23]. An improvement was found relative to a longer follow-up (median 16 weeks) [6,13] probably due to the acquired ability of patients to overcome the post-operating troubles in the long period.…”