Spiral CT angiography in diagnosis of cerebral aneurysms of cases with acute subarachnoid hemorrhage (original) (raw)

M ortality is high in subarachnoid hemorrhages (SAH) due to rupture of aneurysms. Most deaths occur due to the first bleeding or repetitive bleeding (1, 2). For this reason, fast and accurate evaluation of the patients is of great importance in planning the therapeutic interventions. For the time being, selective digital subtraction angiography (DSA) is used as the standard method in diagnosis and preoperative evaluation of cerebral aneurysms. Although the permanent neurologic complication risk is low (0.07%-0.5%) in DSA exams performed in cases with suspected cerebral aneurysms, this method is invasive, time consuming and expensive (3). DSA has high sensitivity and specificity values in diagnosis of cerebral aneurysms while false negative results ranging from 5% to 10% have been reported in the literature (4). The main reason for this is, not being able to obtain the optimal projections necessary for diagnosis of some aneurysms due to physical limitations rather than the insufficiency of spatial resolution of the angiography machine (5). When compared to DSA, spiral CT angiography (CTA) is a faster and a more easily applied method. In contrast to another non-invasive imaging method, magnetic resonance angiography (MRA), spiral CTA enables faster acquisition of three dimensional images related to the cerebral vascular anatomy without patient motion artifacts or artifacts due to flow rate. Another advantage of CTA is its applicability following routine non-enhanced cranial computed tomography (CT) in patients with suspected SAH in emergency conditions. In this study, we aimed to compare the effectiveness of single detector spiral CTA to DSA in diagnosis and evaluation of intracranial aneurysms in cases with acute SAH.

Sign up for access to the world's latest research.

checkGet notified about relevant papers

checkSave papers to use in your research

checkJoin the discussion with peers

checkTrack your impact