• Artery
• cervical
• vasculitis
• thrombectomy
• catheter

Pérez et al1 claim responsibility and primacy for the stent retriever concept, based on a case performed on 3 March 2008, and published in December 2011 in JNIS. The abstract conclusion states that this case, not published until 2011, was ‘the ignition spark for the development of a whole generation of new devices, now called stent retrievers’. In my experience, it is nearly always a mistake to claim to be first. This report is no exception, as the claim is clearly wrong. While this may have been the first use of the Solitaire stent for clot retrieval and perhaps the first case of clot capture and stent withdrawal, it was not the first time a stent designed for assisting aneurysm coiling was successfully used for acute stroke revascularization. Kelly et al partially deployed a self-expanding aneurysm-assist stent and achieved complete revascularization after reconstraining and removing the stent.2 This case was submitted for publication on 3 October 2007 and was published online on 3 April 2008. The report by Kelly et al provided much of the excitement and interest in using retrievable stents for acute stroke intervention.