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Vascular Imaging in Stroke - CTA vs MRA

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Now that we've imaged the head,

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we're going to talk about imaging the vessels.

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CTA is the best way to image the vessels.

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It allows for most rapid evaluation of

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the vessels from the arch to the vertex.

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It allows you to determine hairline residual

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lumen versus occlusion, intravascular

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thrombus, and whether or not stents are

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reoccluded compared to MRA and ultrasound.

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And in the head, which we're going to get

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to a little bit later, it allows detection

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of large vessel occlusions with greater

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than 95% sensitivity and specificity.

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and allows rapid triage of

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patients for thrombolysis,

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and assessment of collateral circulation.

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So, these are some key carotid artery findings.

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You can see on the left here a patient with

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atheromatous disease and a critical stenosis.

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The vessel is so tight that

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the distal lumen is collapsed.

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On MRA, you might not even

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be able to see this, but this

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correlates nicely with a subsequent angio.

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So, critical stenosis with collapsed vessel.

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The next set of images is a

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patient with intraluminal thrombus.

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You can see on the sagittal, this filling defect

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and on the axial image, you can see

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this clot in the middle of the vessel,

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an MRA that can be confused with flow

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artifact and can be difficult to diagnose.

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That's intraluminal thrombus.

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And then, this is an example of a stent.

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You can see there's a stent here.

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And then on this MRA, you see signal dropout.

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You don't know if it's a critical stenosis.

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You really don't know what's going

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on there, but when you do a CTA,

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you can see that the vessel's patent.

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There's some narrowing from internal

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hyperplasia, but the stent's widely patent.

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So for critical stenosis, intraluminal

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thrombus and stents, CTA is really

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the best way to evaluate the vessels.

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

Brain

Angiography

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