1. Transcranial Doppler ultrasonography: From methodology to major clinical applications
- Author
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Eduardo Bossone, Giuseppe Santoro, Raffaele Calabrò, Antonello D'Andrea, Lucia Riegler, Marianna Conte, Raffaella Scarafile, Massimo Cavallaro, Rosangela Cocchia, Maria Giovanna Russo, Enrica Pezzullo, Andreina Carbone, Francesco Natale, Pio Caso, D'Andrea, A, Conte, M, Cavallaro, M, Scarafile, R, Riegler, L, Cocchia, R, Pezzullo, E, Carbone, A, Natale, F, Santoro, G, Caso, P, Russo, Mg, Bossone, E, and Calabro, R
- Subjects
medicine.medical_specialty ,Traumatic brain injury ,business.industry ,Neurointensive care ,030204 cardiovascular system & hematology ,medicine.disease ,Transcranial Doppler ,03 medical and health sciences ,0302 clinical medicine ,Paradoxical embolism ,Cerebral blood flow ,Diagnostic Advances ,medicine.artery ,Internal medicine ,Anesthesia ,Middle cerebral artery ,cardiovascular system ,medicine ,Patent foramen ovale ,Cardiology ,Cardiology and Cardiovascular Medicine ,business ,Stroke ,030217 neurology & neurosurgery - Abstract
Non-invasive Doppler ultrasonographic study of cerebral arteries [transcranial Doppler (TCD)] has been extensively applied on both outpatient and inpatient settings. It is performed placing a low-frequency (≤ 2 MHz) transducer on the scalp of the patient over specific acoustic windows, in order to visualize the intracranial arterial vessels and to evaluate the cerebral blood flow velocity and its alteration in many different conditions. Nowadays the most widespread indication for TCD in outpatient setting is the research of right to left shunting, responsable of so called “paradoxical embolism”, most often due to patency of foramen ovale which is responsable of the majority of cryptogenic strokes occuring in patients younger than 55 years old. TCD also allows to classify the grade of severity of such shunts using the so called “microembolic signal grading score”. In addition TCD has found many useful applications in neurocritical care practice. It is useful on both adults and children for day-to-day bedside assessment of critical conditions including vasospasm in subarachnoidal haemorrhage (caused by aneurysm rupture or traumatic injury), traumatic brain injury, brain stem death. It is used also to evaluate cerebral hemodynamic changes after stroke. It also allows to investigate cerebral pressure autoregulation and for the clinical evaluation of cerebral autoregulatory reserve.
- Published
- 2016