Response to Letter Regarding Article, “Urgent Best Medical Therapy May Obviate the Need for Urgent Surgery in Patients With Symptomatic Carotid Stenosis”

We were delighted at the interest from Dr Naylor with regard to our study and appreciate his comments. We are in agreement as regards the need for minimizing delay from first neurological event to initiation of best medical therapy (BMT). That is why we concluded that our study adds to the data on the benefit of specialist transient ischemic attack clinics.1In 2011, Salem et al2 reported an 11.9% neurological recurrence in 109 symptomatic carotid patients in the waiting time up to carotid endarterectomy (CEA). In this report, only 2 patients underwent CEA <48 hours after index event. Their BMT was aspirin and simivastatin in the waiting time to surgery, …