Is presurgical embolization necessary in carotid body tumors? An experience of 15 years

Introduction: carotid body tumors are rare, representing 0.1 % to 2 % of cervical arterial tumors whose treatment is mainly surgical and the need to perform embolization prior to the procedure is still considered controversial. In the present study we look for an answer to the question of whether to embolize or not. Materials and methods: a retrospective study was carried out including all patients treated for carotid body tumor at the Bajio High Specialty Regional Hospital from 2007 to 2022. Measures of central tendency were used for quantitative variables. Frequency analysis was performed for nominal and ordinal variables. To describe associations, chi-square test and Student's t test were used depending on the type of variable. A p value less than 0.05 was considered significant. The SPSS program version 25 was used to carry out the statistical analysis. Results: 33 patients were collected, of which 93.3 % were female. The average age was 42.21 years with a standard deviation of 11.91 years. 51.5 % of patients underwent presurgical embolization, finding the ascending pharyngeal artery as the main tumor tributary. The average surgical bleeding was 385 cc with a standard deviation of 338.09 cc. No statistically significant relationship was found between surgical bleeding and the number of complications with presurgical embolization. Conclusion: the results presented in this study do not show benefit in performing presurgical embolization with respect to complications, surgical bleeding and operative time.