Carotid Artery Intima-Media Thickness and Large-Artery Atherosclerotic Cerebral Infarction

Lee, Young Bae; Kang, Sung Soo; Park, Hyeon Mi; Shin, Dong Jin

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Carotid artery intima-media thickness (IMT) is an early structural marker of the atherosclerotic processes and an increased carotid IMT is a strong predictor of stroke. The measurement of carotid IMT is a useful non-invasive measure in risk stratification of ischemic stroke. The objective of the present study is to evaluate whether mea-surement of carotid IMT contributes to the prediction of large-artery atherosclesrotic cerebral infarction.
METHODS
By TOAST classifications, 88 patients with ischemic stroke [67 with large-artery disease (LAD) and 21 with small-artery disease (SAD)] were selected from a stroke registry (2000.7~2001.7). Carotid IMT was defined as the mean of IMT measured by B-mode ultrasonography (12 MHz linear probe) at 10 sites of both distal common carotid arteries. The dif-ferences of carotid IMT were analyzed statistically between the LAD and SAD groups according to age or sex.
RESULTS
The carotid IMT was 0.84+/-0.08 mm for the LAD and 0.77+/-0.04 mm for the SAD groups. There were no statistically significant differences (p > 0.05) of carotid IMT(total, age, sex) between the LAD and SAD groups.
CONCLUSIONS
In this study, the carotid IMT was not associated with LAD as wells as SAD. However, with the increase in age, there is a tendency to increase the differences of carotid IMT between LAD and SAD groups.