Abstract
Introduction: Endovascular treatment of intracranial aneurysms has increased compared to microsurgery since the creation of the Guglielmi Detachable Coils (GDC), and is the treatment of choice in several centers worldwide. Our study aimed to analyze the trends over time of number of patients, number of aneurysms, rupture status, location, size and endovascular technique employed in a retrospective cohort of consecutive intracranial aneurysms treated during a 10‐year period. Methods: Data extracted from clinical records, surgical reports, angiographies and CT scans of 765 consecutive patients who underwent endovascular treatment of 845 intracranial aneurysms at our institution between January 2010 and December 2020 was carried out. The Mann‐Kendal test was used to assess time trends. The moving average technique was also employed, using one lagged observation, the current observation and one forward observation in order to create smoother curves. The statistical software Stata v14.0 (StataCorp, College Station, TX, USA) was used. Results: We evaluated 765 patients who underwent 845 endovascular treatments of intracranial aneurysms. Women represented 81% of the cohort. Mean age was 53.9 ± 14.6 years. We identified a significant increase in the number of patients (p = 0.016; p for moving average = 0.005) and in the number of aneurysms over time (p = 0.003; p for moving average = 0.003). For ruptured aneurysms, we did not find changes in the trends over time (p = 0.117; p for moving average = 0.1), whereas in the case of unruptured aneurysms, we identified a significant increase in their treatment (p = 0.029; p for moving average = 0.001). Posterior communicating (p = 0.042: p for moving average = 0.002), paraclinoid (p = 0.06; p for moving average = 0.019) and posterior fossa aneurysms (p = 0.813; p for moving average = 0.028) increased their frequency of treatment over time. Anterior communicating (p = 0.235; p for moving average = 0.21), middle cerebral artery (p = 0.431; p for moving average = 0.347) and internal carotid artery aneurysms (p = 1; p for moving average = 0.754) did not show differences over time. We did not identify changes over time in large (p = 0.31; p for moving average = 0.213), as well as width (p = 0.35; p for moving average = 0.876) and neck diameter (p = 1; p for moving average = 0.815). Balloon‐assisted coiling (p = 0.01; p for moving average = 0.003), flow diverters (p = 0.016; p for moving average < 0.001) and stent‐assisted coiling (p = 0.531; p for moving average = 0.014) showed a positive trend over time. Simple coiling (p = 0.75; p for moving average = 0.184) did not show significant variations over time. Conclusions: We identified a positive trend in the endovascular treatment of unruptured aneurysms, as well as posterior communicating artery, paraclinoid and posterior fossa aneurysms. Assisted‐coiling techniques and flow diverters also showed a positive trend over time. These results are in accordance with the increasing trends in endovascular treatment of intracranial aneurysms worldwide.