Ever since UK investigators prematurely stopped enrollment in the high-profile ISAT trial in May 2002, interventional neuroradiologists (INRs) have been on a high. The first major randomized study comparing neurosurgical clipping to endovascular coil treatment of ruptured cerebral aneurysms favored coils so strongly that the study's principal investigators decided continuing it would be unfair to surgical patients. The results have already changed treatment patterns in some parts of Europe.
Nearly a year later, the American Stroke Association, at its important annual scientific meeting in February, devoted a day of...