Neuropsychological improvement following endarterectomy as a function of outcome measure and reconstructed vessel.
30 patient receiving right or left carotid reconstruction and 15 medically matched controls were compared pre- and post-surgically on measures of motor speed, sustained vigilance, verbal memory and verbal and nonverbal intellectual function. The group receiving right sided vessel reconstruction demonstrated the largest post-operative improvement in intellectual function in any of the groups. The findings suggest that increased blood perfusion following right sided endarterectomy facilitates the right hemisphere's exclusive control of bilateral attention/arousal responses. In addition, findings suggest that detection of post-endarterectomy improvement may be dependent on the specific task dimension sampled, e.g., speed vs. cognitive ability and verbal-graphic vs. nonverbal symbol manipulation.