CHANGES IN HEALTH-RELATED QUALITY OF LIFE AFTER CAROTID ENDARTERECTOMY

Objectives: carotid endarterectomy (CEA) is intended to prevent stroke and therefore to extend lifespan. Whether CEA also influences health-related quality of life (HRQOL) is largely unknown. This study aimed to assess HRQOL-changes after CEA. Design: prospective study, data assessment within 1 week before and 3 months after CEA. Materials: patient classification ( n = 70) was based on presenting neurological symptoms (none (24), transient (26), or permanent (20)), patency or occlusion (27%) of the contralateral internal carotid artery and intraoperative shunt requirement (28%). Methods: HRQOL was investigated with the Sickness Impact Profile (SIP). Analysis of variance was used to adjust for the influence of preoperative differences in functional impairment and comorbidity on the changes found. Results: preoperative findings showed that the SIP scores of stroke patients and shunted patients were significantly higher (indicating poorer HRQOL) than those of the other patients. No adverse effect of CEA was observed. Analysis of variance revealed that neurological classification was not reflected to HRQOL changes. However, patients with contralateral occlusion showed a significant postoperative improvement ( f = 4.99, p Conclusions: HRQOL improvement after CEA is restricted to patients with occlusion of the contralateral carotid artery. Assessment of outcome of CEA should be related not only to neurological classification, but also to haemodynamic factors such as contralateral occlusion.