Abstract
The increased thickness of the carotid wall >1 mm is a significant predictor of coronary and cerebrovascular diseases. The purpose of our study was to assess the agreement between multidetector row computed tomography angiography (MDCTA) in measuring carotid artery wall thickness (CAWT) and color Doppler ultrasound (CD-US) in measuring intimae-media thickness (IMT). Eighty-nine patients (aged 35–81) were prospectively analyzed using a 64-detector MDCTA and a CD-US scanner. Continuous data were described as the mean value ± standard deviation, and were compared using the Mann–Whitney U test. A p value <0.05 was considered significant. Bland–Altman statistics were employed to measure the agreement between MDCTA and CD-US. CAWT ranged from 0.62 to 1.60 mm, with a mean value of 1.09 mm. IMT ranged from 0.60 to 1.55 mm, with a mean value of 1.06 mm. We observed an excellent agreement between CD-US and MDCTA in the evaluation of the common carotid artery thickness, with a bias between methods of 0.029 mm (which is a highly statistically important difference of absolute values [t = 43.289; p < 0.01] obtained by paired T test), and limits of agreement from 0.04 to 0.104. Pearson correlation coefficient was 0.9997 (95% CI 0.9996–0.9998; p < 0.01). We conclude that there is an excellent correlation between CAWT and IMT measurements obtained with the MDCTA and CD-US.
Highlights
Cerebrovascular diseases[1,2,3] are the third highest causes of death, following coronary artery disease and malignant diseases
The purpose of this study was to assess the agreement between color Doppler ultrasound (CD-US) and multidetector row computed tomography angiography (MDCTA) in the study of the common carotid carotid artery wall thickness (CAWT) (CC-CAWT) and the common carotid intima-media thickness (IMT) (CC-IMT)
Our results showed that MDCTA can provide additional information with the CC-CAWT measurements
Summary
Cerebrovascular diseases[1,2,3] are the third highest causes of death, following coronary artery disease and malignant diseases. Atherosclerosis is a primary disease of the artery intima; measurement of the intima-media thickness (IMT) of carotid arteries is used as an important predictor of coronary and cerebrovascular events[4,5,6,7,8,9]. Ultrasonographic examination of the distal common carotid artery (CCA) beyond the carotid bifurcation is challenging. This technique suffers from inter- and intraobserver variability, determined by several parameters (e.g., sonographer experience and type of sonographic scanner)[17,18,19,20]
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