Carotid artery duplex scanning: does plaque echogenicity correlate with patient symptoms?

In this study we have investigated the relationship between plaque sonolucency and ipsilateral hemispheric symptoms in 116 patients at risk of cerebrovascular disease (75 symptomatic patients, 41 asymptomatic patients). Our results indicate that plaque sonolucency is significantly associated with the incidence of patient symptoms at presentation. Twice as many symptomatic vessels contained the predominantly sonolucent plaque types (types 1 and 2) compared to contralateral asymptomatic vessels (p = 0.039, odds ratio = 2.9). Vessel stenosis also had a significant association with patient symptoms. No significant interaction was shown between vessel stenosis and plaque sonolucency (p = 0.15, odds ratio = 1.0). A model using vessel stenosis and plaque echogenicity as independent variables showed that degree of vessel stenosis had a closer association with incidence of symptoms (p = 0.03, odds ratio = 1.04) than plaque type (p = 0.13, odds ratio = 0.51).