Abstract
The correlation between AAA and carotid artery plaque is unknown and a common etiology and pathophysiology is suspected by some authors. The purpose of this work was to explore the association between the features of a) carotid artery plaque and b) abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) plaques using multi-detector-CT Angiography (MDCTA). Forty-eight (32 males; median age 72 years) patients studied using a 16-detectors CT scanner were retrospectively analyzed. A region of interest (ROI) ≥ 2 mm2 was used to quantify the HU value of the plaque by two readers independently. Inter-observer reproducibility was calculated and Pearson correlation analysis was performed. The Bland-Altman plots showed the inter-observer reproducibility to be good. The Pearson correlation was 0.224 (95 % CI = 0.071 to 0.48), without statistically significant association between HU measured in the carotid artery plaque and in the AAA plaques (p = 0.138); after exclusion of the calcified plaques from the analysis, the rho values resulted 0.494 (95 % CI = 0.187 to 0.713) with a statistically significant association (p = 0.003). In this study, we found an association between the features of the non calcific carotid plaque and the features of AAA plaque.
Highlights
The correlation between abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) and carotid artery plaque is unknown and a common etiology and pathophysiology is suspected by some authors
Bland-Altman analysis We analyzed the inter-observer reproducibility of Hounsfield Units (HU) measurement of the plaque in the 79 carotid arteries and in the 45 patients with AAA and the plots are given in the Fig. 2
The plots showed that the interobserver reproducibility is good for both analysis and the best agreement is obtained in the carotid artery plaque HU quantification
Summary
The correlation between AAA and carotid artery plaque is unknown and a common etiology and pathophysiology is suspected by some authors. The purpose of this work was to explore the association between the features of a) carotid artery plaque and b) abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) plaques using multi-detector-CT Angiography (MDCTA). Atherosclerotic disease of carotid artery is considered the most important cause of cerebrovascular events [1, 2]; imaging techniques in the last years focused their attention in finding those parameters that are associated with an increased risk of stroke and transitory ischemic attacks (TIA) [3, 4]. The most prevalent pathology of the aorta is the abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA), whose rupture has. The purpose of this work was to explore the association between plaques in the carotid artery and abdominal aortic aneurysm by using quantitative data obtained with MDCTA. In the last few years MDCTA has emerged as an outstanding technique to explore the vascular system [15,16,17,18], and by using the Hounsfield Units (HU) sampling it is possible to have quantitative and reproducible information of the analyzed tissue [19].
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