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Background: According to the data from the population-based Rotterdam study, intracranial carotid artery calcification detected by computed tomography is very common and contributed to 75% of all strokes. The aim of the present study was to estimate the prevalence of intracranial stenosis (IS) using noninvasive transcranial color-coded duplex sonography (TCCS) in neurologically asymptomatic patients with coronary artery disease (CAD).Methods: Three hundred and eighty-nine patients with angiographically-confirmed, severe CAD were included prospectively. All of them were examined using extracranial and TCCS.Results: Out of 389 patients (age 66.7 ± 9.2, 39-88), 237 (61%) were diagnosed with 3 vessels disease and 152 patients (39%) with left stem disease with/without 3 vessels damage. Transcranial sonography revealed at least 1 IS in 63.6% of echo positive patients (220/346). IS was found in 127 (61.4%) patients with 3 vessels disease, 20 patients (58.8%) with isolated left stem disease, and 73 patients (69.5%) with 3 vessels and left stem disease (P = .305). In the case of significant (≥50%) extracranial internal carotid artery stenosis, intracranial stenosis were detected in 84.8% (50 of 59), in the case of mild (<50%) stenosis, in 59.2% (170 of 287), P < .001.Conclusions: It was found that two thirds of patients with advanced CAD have a silent IS. TCCS is a reliable method for the evaluation of intracranial atherosclerosis in such patients in order to gain useful information about cerebrovascular disease as a risk factor for stroke. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Background: Hemodynamic monitoring of circle of Willis arteries during clot embolization in experimental embolic stroke models (ES) is of major importance to assess their reproducibility and to test new recanalization strategies. We sought to assess the potential of transcranial duplex sonography (TDS) in comparison with laser Doppler flowmetry (LDF) to monitor the time of recanalization after occlusion of the right distal intracranial internal carotid artery (rICA) and to predict infarct volume at 24h after ischemia. Methods: Twenty nine male Sprague–Dawley rats were submitted to ES. Right and left ICA, posterior cerebral arteries, and basilar trunk (BT) were monitored by TDS and regional cerebral blood flow was monitored by LDF at baseline, 1, 4 and 24h after the ES onset. Infarct volume was measured at 24h after stroke. Results: Among the 25 rats, 3 died during surgery, 5 did not show any significant brain infarct (failure of the stroke model) and absence of occlusion of the rICA was detected in all 5 rats by TDS at 1h whereas only 4 of 5 were detected by LDF. Among the remaining 17 rats, the recanalization time of the occluded rICA assessed by TDS correlated with the infarct volume at 24h, r =0.70, P =0.0013 by contrast to results with LDF, r =0.11, P =0.55. Conclusion: Although both TDS and LDF can be used for in vivo assessment of occlusion in a rat ES model, TDS was more reliable as it allowed more accurate monitoring of arterial recanalization, and prediction of infarct volume. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]