• Georgios Tsivgoulis, Konstantinos Vadikolias, Ioannis Heliopoulos, Chaido Katsibari, Konstantinos Voumvourakis, Soultana Tsakaldimi, Eleni Boutati, Spyros N Vasdekis, Dimitrios Athanasiadis, Omar S Al-Attas, Paris Charalampidis, Elefterios Stamboulis, and Charitomeni Piperidou.
• Department of Neurology, School of Medicine, Democritus University of Thrace, Alexandroupolis, Greece; Second Department of Neurology, School of Medicine, University of Athens, Attikon Hospital, Athens, Greece.
• J Neuroimaging. 2014 Jan 1; 24 (1): 111711-7.

BackgroundThere are limited data available regarding symptomatic intracranial atherosclerosis (SIA) prevalence in Caucasians. We sought to investigate SIA prevalence among Caucasian patients hospitalized with acute cerebral ischemia (ACI) in a prospective, multicenter Transcranial Doppler sonography (TCD) study.MethodsConsecutive patients with ACI were prospectively evaluated with TCD over a 24-month-period. The previously validated criteria of SONIA trial were used for detection of >50% intracranial stenosis with TCD. Brain angiography was performed to confirm the diagnosis in cases with abnormal TCD findings. SIA was diagnosed when there was evidence of a cerebral infarction in the territory of the stenotic artery (identified by TCD and confirmed by Magnetic resonance angiography [MRA]/Computed tomography angiography [CTA]).ResultsA total of 467 consecutive patients with ACI (60.4% men, mean age 58 ± 14 years) were evaluated. SIA was documented in 43 patients (9.2%; 95%CI: 6.9%-12.2%). The most common SIA location was M1MCA (34.9%) followed by TICA (18.8%). Diabetes mellitus (OR: 4.25, 95%CI: 2.18-8.26; P < .001) and hypertension (OR: 2.41, 95%CI: 1.02-5.67; P = .045) were independently associated with SIA on multivariate models adjusting for potential confounders.ConclusionsSIA was identified in almost 10% of patients admitted with symptoms of ACI. These preliminary findings support further collaborative initiatives among stroke physicians to increase the yield of SIA detection in Caucasian patients with ACI.Copyright © 2012 by the American Society of Neuroimaging.

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