Elective stenting of symptomatic middle cerebral artery stenosis.

Percutaneous balloon angioplasty has been found to be useful for the treatment of intracranial atherosclerotic arterial stenosis. Nonetheless, an ongoing risk of this procedure is arterial dissection, which increases the hazards of acute closure, stroke, and restenosis. Stenting of the intracranial vasculature recently has been shown to be feasible in a variety of circumstances. To our knowledge, however, stenting of the middle cerebral artery has not been possible until now primarily because of difficulty with tracking stents across the carotid siphon. We describe the successful treatment of a symptomatic middle cerebral artery stenosis achieved using a balloon-expandable flexible coronary stent.