ABSTRACT
About 600 000 individuals each year suffer a new or recurrent ischaemic and haemorrhagic stroke.1 Overall, ischaemic strokes account for about 85% of strokes (61% atherothrombotic, 24% embolic), and about 15% are haemorrhagic.1 In symptomatic carotid disease, atheroembolism is considered the underlying cause of the majority of strokes, although the contribution of intracerebral atherosclerosis is unknown. This chapter characterizes atherosclerotic carotid disease in light of the knowledge of coronary atherosclerosis and relates carotid plaque morphology to cerebral ischaemic syndromes.
