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

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.