Clinical Challenges in Vascular Surgery: Asymptomatic Carotid Artery Stenosis

For decades, a tight carotid stenosis felt like a ticking time bomb — a plaque waiting to throw an embolus and cause the next stroke. We were taught that severe narrowing meant surgery, and trials like ACAS and ACST-1 seemed to prove it. But medicine has changed. Statins, antiplatelets, tighter blood pressure control, even PCSK9 and GLP-1 therapies have quietly slashed stroke risk, and now newer data from CREST-2 suggest that for many asymptomatic patients, the knife — or the stent — may not add much at all. So if modern medical therapy works better than ever… who actually benefits from intervention anymore? Today, we unpack the evidence, the controversies, and how to counsel the patient who feels perfectly fine but has high-grade stenosis.

Hosts: Carolyn Judge, Andrew Huang, Luciano Delbono, Frank Davis, Robert Beaulieu

Institution: University of Michigan, Department of Surgery, Section of Vascular Surgery

Learning objectives:

1. Describe how modern intensive medical therapy has transformed the natural history of asymptomatic carotid stenosis and explain why contemporary patients experience substantially lower annual stroke risk than those in earlier eras.
2. Interpret and compare the results of landmark trials—including ACAS, ACST-1, and CREST-2—to assess the relative benefits of medical therapy, endarterectomy, and stenting.
3. Apply current evidence and guideline recommendations to patient care by selecting which asymptomatic patients are most likely to benefit from carotid revascularization versus optimized medical therapy alone.

References:
SVS Guidelines:
Brook, R. D., et al. (2022). Society for Vascular Surgery clinical practice guidelines for management of extracranial carotid artery disease. Journal of Vascular Surgery, 75(1), e1–e67. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvs.2021.09.031

CREST (1)
Brott, T. G., Hobson, R. W., Howard, G., et al. (2010). Stenting versus endarterectomy for treatment of carotid-artery stenosis. New England Journal of Medicine, 363(1), 11–23. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa0912321

CREST-2
Brott, T. G., Howard, G., Fong, P., et al. (2024). Randomized trial of carotid artery stenting or carotid endarterectomy vs best medical therapy for asymptomatic carotid stenosis: CREST-2 results. [Manuscript in preparation]. ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02089217. Retrieved from https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02089217

ACST-1
Halliday, A., Mansfield, A., Marro, J., et al. (2004). Randomised trial of carotid artery surgery for asymptomatic stenosis. Lancet, 363(9420), 1491–1502. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(04)16153-1

ACST-2
Halliday, A., Bulbulia, R., Bonati, L. H., et al. (2021). Carotid artery stenting versus carotid endarterectomy in patients with asymptomatic carotid stenosis (ACST-2): A randomised trial. Lancet, 398(10291), 1065–1073. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(21)01980-1

ACAS
Executive Committee for the Asymptomatic Carotid Atherosclerosis Study. (1995). Endarterectomy for asymptomatic carotid stenosis. JAMA, 273(18), 1421–1428. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.1995.03520420033036

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