Carotid Stent Cell Design: Lack of Benefit or Lack of Evidence?

Abstract

To the Editor: We would like to congratulate Schillinger and colleagues for their recent retrospective analysis on 1684 patients who underwent carotid stenting with either a closed- or open-cell stent design.1 The authors concluded that current data do not support the superiority of a specific carotid stent cell design.1 Although we thank Schillinger and colleagues for the significant effort spent in collecting and analyzing the published data, we must highlight that many relevant methodological issues beyond those discussed by authors should be taken into much greater account, because they may explain the apparent lack of benefit of a specific carotid stent cell design over the other. First, it is tempting and highly attractive to speculate that closed-cell design stents may …