Intracranial internal carotid artery calcification: a representative for cerebral artery calcification and
Pil-Wook Chung1, Kwang-Yeol Park, Heui-Soo Moon
1Department of Neurology, Kangbuk Samsung Hospital, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, Korea.
Background:
Our aim was to investigate the distribution pattern of cerebral artery calcification and its association with white matter hyperintensities (WMH).
Methods:
We identified 159 consecutive patients with acute ischemic stroke. Calcifications of cerebral arteries and WMH were graded.
Results:
Cerebral artery calcification was found in 137 patients (86.2%). The intracranial internal carotid artery (I-ICA) was the most frequently affected artery with calcification (76.7%) and moderate-to-severe calcification (38.1%). Spearman's rank test revealed that the grade of I-ICA calcification was correlated with those of periventricular WMH (r = 0.417, p < 0.001) and deep WMH (r = 0.388, p < 0.001). The adjusted ORs of I-ICA were 2.62 (p <0.05) for periventricular WMH and 3.25 (p <0.05) for deep WMH.
Conclusions:
Cerebral artery calcification is common in patients with ischemic stroke. I-ICA is the most frequently and most severely affected cerebral artery and its calcification is associated with WMH.
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