Surgery has long been the “gold standard” in treating those people with clogged arteries in their necks. Now, however Stents have come on the scene and have saved lives.
Stents are tubes that are put into arteries. They do two things. The first is to open up clogged arteries and the second is to remove the clog and keep the arteries open enough for the blood to flow freely through.
In using both they have found that in the first two years after surgery, those folks had slightly more heart attacks. In the first two years after stents were placed in the arteries those folks had slightly more strokes. They say after about 2 years and 5 months no real difference was found between the two groups.
From personal experience my mom had almost complete blockage in the neck arteries on both sides. They implanted stints and all went well.