TUESDAY, July 25 (HealthDay News) -- Carotid artery stenting may improve symptoms of depression, possibly due to the effects of cerebral reperfusion, according to a study in the August issue of the journal Radiology.
Wolfgang Mlekusch, M.D., of Vienna General Hospital and Medical School in Vienna, Austria, and colleagues compared depressive symptoms among 143 patients with carotid artery stenosis and 102 age- and gender-matched controls with peripheral artery disease who were slated to undergo lower-limb angioplasty. Depressive symptoms were assessed by the Beck Depression Inventory at baseline and four weeks following surgery.
Patients with carotid artery stenosis had a higher prevalence of depressive symptoms compared with controls and patients with greater than 80 percent luminal narrowing showed the highest degrees of depression. Specifically, 33.6 percent of patients with carotid artery stenosis presented with depressive symptoms, compared with 16.7 percent of control subjects. One month after surgery, just 9.8 percent of patients with carotid artery stenosis showed depressive symptoms, compared with 13 percent of the controls.
"Our findings suggest that improvement of cerebral perfusion by removing the stenosis with a minimally invasive technique with the use of local anesthetic is associated with significant improvement of depressive symptoms," the study authors conclude.
Abstract
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