• JUXTALUMINAL ECHOGENICITY AS A MAR­KER OF CAROTID PLAQUE INSTABILITY

    T. Tegos, A. Petrakis, A. Valavanis, A. Safouris, A. Papadimitriou, A. Orologas
    A Neurology Department, AHEPA Hospital, Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki – Thessaloniki, Greece

    Objective: Previous studies concluded that symptomatic carotid plaques are echolucent on ultrasound, whereas asymptomatic ones are echogenic. The aim of this study was to determine whether juxtaluminal plaque echogenicity (juxtaluminal 25% plaque area) constitutes a better discriminator of the symptomatic and asymptomatic status, as compared to global plaque echogenicity, in various degrees of stenosis.

    Material and Methods: Analysis involved imaging by duplex of 100 carotid plaques of more than 50% stenosis (86 patients, 50 symptomatic and 50 asymptomatic plaques), capturing, digitisation and normalisation in a computer in a standard way. The global plaque Grey Scale Median (GSMglobal) was evaluated to distinguish dark (low GSM) from bright (high GSM) plaques. Subsequently, juxtaluminal 25% plaque area GSM (GSMjl25%) was evaluated semi-quantitatively in the same computer software. Stenosis was evaluated on duplex.