Background: Intraoperative duplex examination can be used during carotid surgery to identify small technical defects (like anastomotic stenosis, intimal flaps or subintimal wall dissections) that cannot be easily found by palpatory manoeuvres. The objective of this clinical study is to correlate intraoperative duplex findings with early postoperative complications and with duplex data obtained during follow-up.
Methods: From January 1993 to January 1996 we compared early and late postoperative complications that occurred after carotid surgery in two groups of patients: a group of 120 patients undergone intraoperative duplex compared with a group of 100 patients not undergone intraoperative ultrasound.
Results: The percentages of early and late postoperative complications which occurred in the first group were respectively 7.5% and 4.2% contrary to 10% and 7% occurred in the control group.
Conclusions: Duplex constitutes a selective intraoperative method for carotid surgery, easy to use, enable to identify and immediately correct technical defects.