Clinical trials

The prevalence of unruptured intracranial aneurysm (UIA) in the population is about 2%-7%, and once it ruptures and bleeds, the rate of disability and death is extremely high, with 10%-15% of patients dying suddenly before they can seek medical attention, 35% of first-time bleeders, and 60%-80% of second-time bleeders. Survivors are often disabled. Therefore, there is a broad consensus that UIA with surgical indication should be aggressively intervened. The efficacy and safety of flow diverter (FD) in the treatment of UIA has been confirmed by many large clinical trials. Currently, FD placement for UIA is performed under general anesthesia (GA) in most centers, however, some studies have observed that FD placement under local anesthesia (LA) is not as effective as FD placement under general anesthesia and have demonstrated the feasibility of FD placement under local anesthesia (LA) with high technical success rates and low perioperative complication rates and mortality. However, the retrospective design and relatively limited sample size of the above studies may introduce significant bias and affect the confidence of the conclusions. Therefore, the present trial was designed as a randomized controlled trial with the aim of comparing the safety and efficacy of GA and LA in UIA patients undergoing FD placement. The results of this study will help inform future multicenter trials to validate the impact of anesthesia choice on the safety and efficacy in UIA patients undergoing FD placement.

Vertebrobasilar dissecting aneurysms (VBDAs) are one of the most important causes of stroke in young and middle-aged people, and the natural history of VBDAs is complex and varied, often leading to high rates of disability and mortality. For some patients with VBDAs who are not suitable for surgical entrapment and intervention, pharmacologic therapy may be used to slow the progression of VBDAs. Metformin (MET) has been shown to act as an anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidative stress and improve vascular endothelial function by inhibiting smooth muscle cell phenotypic transformation, proliferation, migration and apoptosis, thereby reducing the incidence of intracranial aneurysms and rupture rates, and MET may be a suitable candidate. Inflammatory response plays an important role in the occurrence, development and rupture of VBDAs. Inflammatory response in the aneurysm wall can cause endothelial and smooth muscle cell injury and apoptosis, leading to degenerative changes in the vessel wall and increasing the risk of rupture of VBDAs. High-resolution magnetic resonance vessel wall imaging (HR-VWI), which can clearly show the structure of the vessel wall and reflect the active degree of inflammatory reaction in the aneurysm wall, has been widely used in the assessment of intracranial aneurysm instability. In this study, we propose to conduct a multicenter, prospective, randomized study to investigate whether MET reduces the degree of aneurysm wall inflammatory response in VBDAs by performing HR-VWI scans in patients with VBDAs and obtaining quantitative parameters reflecting the inflammatory response of the aneurysm wall.