Abstract
Patients with acute severe headache may have a secondary form of headache. Standard head computer tomography (CT) and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) examination are often performed in the absence of neurological deficits to exclude subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH). Increasingly, patients undergo subsequent CT angiography (CTA) to exclude cerebral venous thrombosis (CVT), dissection or reversible cerebral vasoconstriction syndrome (RCVS). It is unknown whether this additional imaging increases diagnostic yield. We aimed to evaluate the yield of CTA in patients with acute severe headache with normal neurological examination and no abnormalities at standard CT and CSF analysis. We included consecutive patients presenting to the emergency room between January 2008 and May 2011 with acute severe headache and without abnormalities at neurological examination, CT and CSF research, who received a CTA in the diagnostic process in our teaching hospital. All scans were rereviewed by an experienced neuroradiologist. We included 70 patients, 71% were women and average age was 45years. We found a vascular abnormality in 13 (19%) of our patients. Four had either a prior aneurysm or CVT. Eight patients had an unruptured intracranial aneurysm (UIA) on CTA (11%), two had CVT (3%), two had RCVS (3%) and one had cerebral ischemia (1%). We found a high percentage of vascular abnormalities. A third of these patients had a prior episode of either an aneurysm or CVT. In patients with a history of UIA or CVT performing CTA despite normal CT and LP therefore seems warranted. A prospective study to delineate indications for CTA is needed.
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.