Solitaire stentectomy: 'deploy and engage' and 'loop and snare' techniques

Abstract

Solitaire FR stent-based mechanical thrombectomy provides clinical benefit in selected patients with acute ischaemic stroke due to large vessel occlusion. A dreaded device complication that is associated with poor technical and clinical outcome is stent detachment. Retrieval of the detached stent can be technically challenging and has been attempted with variable success. The key benefit of this strategy is the lack of need to administer fibrinolytic/antiplatelet agents that can potentially be catastrophic in the setting of acute stroke. Therefore, retrieval may be preferred to other strategies (balloon angioplasty, lytic/glycoprotein 2b/3a inhibitors administration) to address detached stent. We report two patients in whom the detached stent was retrieved using alternative techniques-'deploy and engage' and 'loop and snare'-as snare retrieval failed.