Detection of moderate to severe middle cerebral artery atherosclerotic stenosis in stroke patients: Transcranial color-coded duplex sonography versus computed tomography angiography.

Background

Intracranial atherosclerotic stenosis is a common cause of ischemic cerebrovascular events and is associated with a high risk of stroke recurrence. This study aimed to assess the diagnostic accuracy of transcranial color-coded duplex sonography for moderate-to-severe middle cerebral artery stenosis in stroke patients.

Methods

A retrospective analysis was carried out, including 31 patients aged ⩾18 years hospitalized for ischemic cerebrovascular event in whom middle cerebral artery stenosis ⩾30% was identified on computed tomography angiography. Transcranial color-coded duplex sonography findings were compared to the degree of stenosis blindly identified on the computed tomography angiography used as the reference method.

Results

Overall, 27 patients had M1 stenosis and the other 4 had M2 stenosis. To detect M2 stenosis ⩾ 50% and ⩾ 70%, stenotic to pre-stenotic ratio ⩾ 2 and ⩾ 3 had a sensitivity of 100%, respectively. To detect M1 stenosis ⩾ 70%, peak systolic velocity ⩾ 300 cm/s had a sensitivity of 53.8% and specificity of 85.7% with area under the receiver-operating characteristic curve of 0.753 (95% confidence interval: 0.568-0.938;

Conclusion

This study showed that stenotic to pre-stenotic ratio ⩾ 3 was more sensitive than peak systolic velocity ⩾ 300 cm/s to screen M1 stenosis ⩾ 70%. Middle cerebral artery/anterior cerebral artery ratio < 0.7 was a good indirect sign to detect dampened pre-stenotic flow due to M1 stenosis ⩾ 70%.

Informations de copyright

© The Author(s) 2023.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.