[Diagnosis and surgical treatment of carotid body tumor].

OBJECTIVE: To promote the rate of diagnosis and successful rate of operation for carotid body tumor. METHOD: 26 cases of the 30 patients with carotid body tumor were performed by DSA and 5 cases of them, feeding arteries of tumor were embolized with gelfoam through superlective catheterization, preoperativelly. The tumor was resected under carotid adventitial plane in 12 cases, with extracervical artery in 8 cases and with tumor-carotid segment block in 10 cases. RESULT: Of the 30 cases, no one died from operation or cerebral vascular complications. DSA plays a significant role in diagnosis of the tumor. Intraoperative bleeding can be remarkably reduced if feeding arteries were embolized preoperativelly. The tumor fixed to segment of the carotid arteries block was resected and the reconstruction of vasculature was unnecessary as soon as candidates were certified to be qualified by carotid training and DSA or/and TCD tests. Follow up of these 30 patients revealed that 25 of them survived free from cerebrovascular complications and tumor recurrence for 5 months-10 years. 1 of them died from traffic accident 2 year after operation, 4 of them had lost communication. CONCLUSION: DSA is a most authritative approach for diagnosis of carotid body tumor, DSA and TCD tests play a key role to resect carotid artery without reconstruction. Successful operation based on a precise preoperative evaluation, choice of operative ways and proper procedure.