Initial experience with intracranial stent-graft use. Technical notes.

SUMMARY: We describe our initial experience with the placement of two premounted balloon expandable intracranial Jostent stent-grafts within the intracavernous internal carotid artery for the treatment of a symptomatic large intracavernous aneurysm in one case and a post-traumatic caroticocavernous fistula in the second. Among the initial technical complications we encountered were stent-graft migration and rapidly progressive intragraft thrombosis, with delayed sealing of the stent-graft coverings and exclusion of the pathologies relating to the use of abciximab in both cases. Despite these initial problems both cases had excellent short-term clinical outcomes with angiographic exclusion of both lesions by day three and good clinical and angiographic outcomes at one and two months respectively.