The value of CT angiography in patients with acute severe headache
| Autor: | G. Lycklama à Nijeholt, Marieke J. H. Wermer, I. R. van den Wijngaard, R. J. Verheul, Korné Jellema, Ale Algra, I. M. E. Alons |
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| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2015 |
| Předmět: |
Adult
Male medicine.medical_specialty Subarachnoid hemorrhage Neurology Clinical Neurology Neurological examination Neuroimaging Aneurysm Humans Medicine Prospective Studies cardiovascular diseases Aged medicine.diagnostic_test business.industry Headache General Medicine Middle Aged medicine.disease Reversible cerebral vasoconstriction syndrome Cerebral Angiography Acute headache Venous thrombosis Dissection CT angiography Angiography Female Neurology (clinical) Radiology Tomography X-Ray Computed business |
| Zdroj: | Acta Neurologica Scandinavica, 131(3), 164. Wiley-Blackwell Acta Neurologica Scandinavica, 131(3), 164-168 |
| ISSN: | 0001-6314 |
| Popis: | Patients with acute severe headache may have a secondary form of headache. Standard head computer tomography (CT) and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) examination are often performed in the absence of neurological deficits to exclude subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH). Increasingly, patients undergo subsequent CT angiography (CTA) to exclude cerebral venous thrombosis (CVT), dissection or reversible cerebral vasoconstriction syndrome (RCVS). It is unknown whether this additional imaging increases diagnostic yield. We aimed to evaluate the yield of CTA in patients with acute severe headache with normal neurological examination and no abnormalities at standard CT and CSF analysis. We included consecutive patients presenting to the emergency room between January 2008 and May 2011 with acute severe headache and without abnormalities at neurological examination, CT and CSF research, who received a CTA in the diagnostic process in our teaching hospital. All scans were rereviewed by an experienced neuroradiologist. We included 70 patients, 71% were women and average age was 45 years. We found a vascular abnormality in 13 (19%) of our patients. Four had either a prior aneurysm or CVT. Eight patients had an unruptured intracranial aneurysm (UIA) on CTA (11%), two had CVT (3%), two had RCVS (3%) and one had cerebral ischemia (1%). We found a high percentage of vascular abnormalities. A third of these patients had a prior episode of either an aneurysm or CVT. In patients with a history of UIA or CVT performing CTA despite normal CT and LP therefore seems warranted. A prospective study to delineate indications for CTA is needed. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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