Original ArticleRelationship between Carotid Artery Remodeling and Plaque Vulnerability with T1-Weighted Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Section snippets
Study Population
Between May 2006 and September 2008, 70 patients with significant carotid stenosis (≥50%) who underwent CEA were selected. Nine patients were excluded after the histologic examination because their plaques were damaged during CEA and could not be histologically evaluated. Finally, 61 patients were included in this study: 36 patients had symptomatic carotid stenosis (32 men with a mean age of 70.5 ± 8.7 years and degree of stenosis of 80.3 ± 11.3%) and 25 patients had asymptomatic carotid
Patient Characteristics
The characteristics of the study population are listed in Table 1. The symptomatic and asymptomatic groups had similar demographic features and no significant differences in the frequency of conventional risk factors for carotid artery disease. With regard to their plaque characteristics, symptomatic patients had a higher number of mobile plaques (33.3% versus 8.0%, P = .03). No significant difference in the existence of ulceration and echolucency by ultrasound imaging and the SIR of carotid
Discussion
In this study, we showed that larger outward remodeling of the carotid artery was significantly associated with symptomatic carotid plaques and markers of histologic carotid plaque vulnerability such as higher NC proportion, IPH score, prevalence of fresh IPH, mural thrombus, and inflammatory cells. This is the first report to examine the relationship between histologic markers related to the carotid plaque vulnerability and carotid artery remodeling, suggesting that CRI is a useful marker of
Conclusions
This study clearly demonstrates the relationship between carotid artery remodeling and plaque vulnerability based on symptomatology and histology in significant carotid stenosis (≥50%) using MPRAGE. This study indicates that MPRAGE imaging is useful for the assessment of carotid artery remodeling. To evaluate the outward remodeling of carotid artery using MPRAGE imaging is predictive of the risk of ipsilateral ischemic events in the future.
Acknowledgment
The authors thank Mayumi Oka and Yoshifumi Higashino for collecting the patient data.
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Grant support: None.
Disclosure: The authors report no conflict of interest concerning the materials or methods used in this study or the findings specified in this article.