Over the past decade, the use of stents, or stenting as it is called, has become a very popular method of reopening the clogged blood vessels of the legs and heart. Recent advances in stenting have allowed physicians to also use this technique to unblock the carotid artery in the neck, a major supplier of blood to the brain. Unblocking this artery with a carotid artery stent helps prevent strokes, which are sometimes known as "brain attacks." A carotid artery stent can save lives.

Using the latest minimally invasive techniques and technologies when performing carotid stenting, the physicians at the Center for Endovascular Surgery insert a catheter through a tiny incision in the skin of the groin into the femoral artery, a large blood vessel in the leg. Using guidance from imaging techniques such as X-rays, the catheter is navigated through the body's circulatory system of blood vessels until the tip of the catheter is positioned within the narrowing of the carotid artery or arteries of the brain, hence the term, carotid stenting.

At the end of the catheter is a balloon and a stent. A stent is a small mesh tube. The balloon is used to open the narrowing. After the balloon opens the narrowing, the stent is removed from its protective covering, at which point it automatically expands in the vessel and is left there to help keep the vessel open.

Use of a carotid artery stent is becoming ever more prevalent as the technology becomes more refined and the stents themselves become more flexible and smaller in size. Because of these improvements, it is now possible to even use stents in the tiny arterial blood vessels within the brain tissue itself to treat the symptoms of progressive narrowing and hardening of the arteries in the brain.