Diagnostic value of 64-slice CTA to head and neck artery lesions of the elder

Abstract

Objective To investigate the diagnostic value of 64-slice CT angiography (CTA) to head and neck artery pathological changes. Methods One hundred patients with clinical suspicion of head and neck vascular lesions were retrospectively analyzed. Sixty four cases of lesions were detected by 64-slice CTA, and were checked by Digital Subtraction Angiography (DSA) within a week. First, the correlation of 64-slice CTA and DSA diagnosis of head and neck artery stenosis grade was counted. Then DSA was taken as the gold standard. The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value of 64-slice CTA to diagnose head and neck arteries stenosis were calculated. Results Of 64 cases of patients, 2 cases of congenital vascular dysplasia, including 1 case with internal carotid artery in 2 cases, the remaining 60 patients had different degree of stenosis. The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value of 64-slice CTA was 95.34%, 99.48%, 97.62%, and 98.98%, respectively. Among 60 narrow patients, the plaque number was 205, including 88 soft plaques, 56 mixed plaques, and 61 calcified plaque. Conclusions The 64-silce CTA has multiple advantages including rapid, noninvasiveness, high accuracy and safety, and high application value in the diagnosis of head and neck vascular lesions. It is worth promoting. Key words: Tomography, spiral computed; Carotid artery diseases/RA