Summary
During recent years, the risk involved in cerebral angiography has been considerably
reduced. However, in our patient group this risk was still almost as high as that
involved in operation. Non-invasive examination by means of the ultrasonic Doppler
procedure has been improved with a resulting success rate of over 95%. Color coding
stored in a computer program with the "Echoflow"-procedure allows for demonstration
of the neck vessels giving an indication of the degree of stenosis. By this method,
pictures of document quality are provided which can also be obtained by inexperienced
examiners and interpreted more easily than curve registrations of the acoustic signals.
In comparison with angiography, the Echoflow method was less sensitive than the conventional
ultrasonic Doppler procedure especially in cases of low-degree stenosis of the internal
carotid artery. Nevertheless, in 2.7% of the cases, a correct Echoflow diagnosis could
be confirmed during operation where anigography had not shown the changes correctly.
As the Echoflow procedure does not give sufficient information on intracranial pathology,
we have so far dropped angiography in emergency cases only when establishing the indication
for operation; however, in follow-up examinations this method is used exclusively
instead of angiography.
Key words
Cerebrovascular insufficiency - Ultrasonic Doppler-sonography - Angiography - Reconstructive
vascular surgery
