Utilidad del ultrasonido en el diagnóstico y seguimiento de las disecciones carotídea o vertebral extracraneal.

Introduction: arterial dissection is a lesion that affects the thickness of the wall of a blood vessel causing hematomas below intima or the adventitia, both of which may produce emboli in intracranial arteries. They have an annual incidence of 2.6/100,000 inhabitants, commonly occur between 30 and 50 years of age, and are identified as the cause of 2.5% of ischemic strokes. Objective: identify ultrasound findings in patients with clinical diagnosis of dissection of the carotid or extracranial vertebral arteries. Material and methods: ambispective study with a descriptive phase and another to analyze the diagnostic method. Patients of either gender who attended to Instituto Nacional de Neurología y Neurocirugía Manuel Velazco Suarez, with clinical diagnosis of dissection of the carotid or extracranial vertebral arteries were studied. Subjects underwent color Doppler ultrasound and arterial dissection was confirmed by angiography, angiotomography, or angioresonance. Results: we studied a total of 66 patients: 24 (36.4%) female and 42 (63.6%) male. Forty-two (63.6%) had echographic and angiographic diagnosis of carotid artery dissection and 24 (36.4%) had diagnosis of vertebral artery dissection. The age range was between 21 and 77 years with a mean of 45 ± 15. Discussion: Color Doppler ultrasound is an economical and readily accessible technique for non-invasive evaluation of carotid and vertebral diseases. Because dissection may occur with few or no symptoms or signs and its clinical presentation is variable, they are not candidates for angiograms. For this reason, it is important to validate this study as a diagnostic method in this kind of disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]