Essay from the year 2009 in the subject Medicine - Surgery, Accident Medicine, grade: Excellent , Maastricht University, language: English, abstract: The goal of this systematic review was to find evidence for a correlation between carotid artery stenosis and perioperative stroke in patients undergoing cardiac surgery. Articles were searched in NCBI Pubmed, and appraised based on several criteria, to explore the evidence for a correlation between carotid stenosis and perioperative stroke. A total of 96 articles were found with the search strategy. Also references as well as related articles were screened. A total of six articles matched the criteria and results were accurately analysed. Concluding, the incidence of carotid stenosis is signifiantly higher in stroke patients, comparted to patients without stroke. However, carotid stenosis is the aetiological factor of stroke in just a little number of patients, who suffer from stroke and is more likely an additional co-morbidity, without an independent correlation.