What is the chance of another stroke during or following the operation?
The surgery has been safe, and has a low complication rate, but approximately 7% of patients will suffer new strokes of varying degrees of severity either at the time of surgery or during the first post-operative month. Most of these patients had been neurologically unstable before surgery, having frequent strokes or numerous transient ischemic attacks (“TIA’s”) — brief periods of neurological dysfunction that are often warning signs of an impending stroke – in the months or weeks before the operation. We believe that such patients are at a higher risk for stroke during a surgical procedure than patients who have had no recent events of this type. For this reason, we usually wait for four to six weeks after any stroke before we proceed with surgery. In four patients, I thought that unstable blood pressure or medication problems were the likely causes of the new post-operative strokes. Some patients have had new strokes while waiting for surgery that had to be delayed or postponed for
