My 5 mm annie on the internal carotid has the ophthalmic artery coming out the side of it. The doctor who did my angiogram told me it wasn't treatable through endovascular means. The surgeon also told me a craniotomy and clipping is riskier than leaving it alone and monitoring it.
At my one year follow-up, the CTA showed no changes. The next day I got a call from the doctor's office saying that at the weekly group aneurysm meeting, my case came up, and it could possibly be treated with the PED, so today I had an appointment to talk it over.
The doctor laid out the options and explained how the device usually lets enough blood through to feed the artery coming off the annie. The upside of treatment would be that I wouldn't continue to run a 1% annual risk of it bursting and the awful consequences.
The downside would be that there is no way to know for sure whether or not the blood flow to the ophthalmic artery would actually be preserved. He didn't give a % or anything like that. I am not willing to risk my eye at this stage of the game.
So, we will continue monitoring. If it grows, it's nice to know the PED is an option. Maybe as the base of patients who receives them grows, the doctors will have a better idea how reliable the blood flow will be. So here we are.