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Case - Embolic Stroke with ICA Dissection

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Okay, I'd like to show you this

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case of stroke with dissection.

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This is a patient who had a week-long history

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of weakness and right-sided facial droop that

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progressed, and this is the noncontrast CT,

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and you can see the hyperdense vessel sign that

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we talked about before in the MCA stem, and you

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can see a subacute stroke involving the basal

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ganglia and the left anterior temporal lobe.

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and extending up into the left frontal

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lobe, and you can see there's some

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mass effect on the right lateral

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ventricle, and there's no hemorrhage

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and the rest of the brain looks normal.

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And now we're going to look

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at what caused the stroke.

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So again, I'm going to look at my, um,

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coronal and axial MIPs, and I'm going to

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start with the coronal MIPs here, and ICA.

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And you can see that the bifurcation looks

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normal, but then it looks really weird here.

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It looks like there's incremental

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thrombus and flap and some narrowing.

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So we're going to want to look

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closely at that on the source

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images, but also the right ICA box.

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It's big here and it doesn't quite look normal,

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so we're going to get a better look at that.

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And the irregularities look,

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um, slightly irregular.

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There's a little clot on the right.

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So we're looking at a patient who

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may have multiple dissections.

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Let's look at the sagittal images.

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Here's the left side again.

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You can see it's irregular and there's

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probably intraluminal thrombus.

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And the right side has a pseudoaneurysm,

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that's a common sign of carotid dissections,

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there's a little irregularity above that.

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Those are my thoughts on the vessels, so

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let's take a look at the axial images.

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We're just going to follow the left

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common carotid artery up, so here's

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the left common carotid artery.

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And we get up to the bifurcation looks normal.

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This is a relatively young patient,

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doesn't really have atherosclerotic disease.

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And then we note that the vessel gets a

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little bit larger and there's a little

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subaneurysm and maybe some intraluminal clot.

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It's a string sign at the skull

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base, and then it's occluded,

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reconstituted, it's still a string sign.

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And then when you get up intracranially,

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there's a cutoff because there's an MCA thrombus,

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which we just saw on the noncontrast head CT.

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So this patient has a left carotid

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dissection with an embolus to the left MCA.

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And then on the right side, you can see it

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looks pretty normal, internal carotid artery.

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And then there's that double lumen

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sign because there's a pseudoaneurysm

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that we saw on the MIP images.

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And then there's a little irregularity

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in the skull base, so it basically

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has bilateral carotid dissections.

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Then on the left vertebral artery,

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we're going to follow that up.

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You can see a little tiny irregularity there.

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And then the right vertebral

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artery, follow that up.

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And that looks okay until you get

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to the B3 segment, which is the

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part that goes around C1 and C2.

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And you can see that's irregular,

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probably a little intraluminal thrombus.

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Dissections in basically the bilateral common

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carotid arteries and the right vertebral artery,

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then a big MCA stroke, as we said, and then

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the left vertebral artery slightly irregular.

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So this patient does not carry the diagnosis

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of a specific collagen vascular disease, but

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my guess is has an underlying collagen vascular

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disease, perhaps fibromuscular dysplasia.

Report

Faculty

Pamela W Schaefer, MD, FACR

Professor of Radiology, Vice Chair of Education

Massachusetts General Hospital

Tags

Vascular Imaging

Vascular

Neuroradiology

Neuro

MRA

Head and Neck

CTA

CT

Brain

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