Incidence and etiology of intracerebral hemorrhage following carotid endarterectomy.

In a consecutive series of 1930 carotid endarterectomies there were eight cases of postoperative intracerebral hemorrhage. One of these patients was operated on 2 weeks following cerebral infarction and had severe uncontrollable hypertension after surgery. A second patient had an intraoperative embolus and bled while fully heparinized on the 3rd postoperative day. Only one patient in the series bled into an area of documented cerebral infarction. The remainder of the cases represented hemorrhage into essentially normal brain. Seven of the eight patients with intracerebral hemorrhage had high-grade internal carotid artery stenosis preoperatively. Although several factors have contributed to the brain hemorrhages in this series of patients, postoperative cerebral hyperperfusion which often follows endarterectomy may have played an important role. Defective cerebrovascular autoregulation in chronically ischemic brain regions may predispose patients to intracerebral hemorrhage after removal of a high-grade stenosis of the internal carotid artery.