Quantitative measurement of carotid intima-media roughness--effect of age and manifest coronary artery disease.
Atherosclerotic changes of the common carotid artery (CCA) may appear like irregularities of the intima-media thickness (abbreviated as IM roughness) in B-mode ultrasound. The purposes of the present study were to investigate whether the CCA IM roughness changes with age and differs between individuals presumed to be healthy and patients with coronary artery disease (CAD).


RESULTS
Based on a new automatic identification (AI) program, the segmental intima-media thickness (IMT) and IM roughness of the CCA far wall were measured in B-mode images of 15 younger and 22 older volunteers presumed to be healthy, and 46 patients with known CAD. The mean and maximum CCA IMT were lowest in the young group (0.55+/-0.05; 0.65+/-0.06 mm), higher in the older group (0.77+/-0.16; 0.87+/-0.18 mm) and highest in CAD patients (0.88+/-0.18; 1.01+/-0.27 mm) (P<0.01 among all groups). The CCA IM roughness was greatest by far in the CAD patients (0.075+/-0.02 mm; P<0.01 vs. both groups) and increased only slightly with age (younger: 0.035+/-0.008 mm; older: 0.040+/-0.014 mm; P<0.05). Areas under the curve (AUC) of receiver-operating characteristic curves (ROC) predicting patients with CAD were higher for the CCA IM roughness (0.80) than for the mean (0.66) and maximum IMT (0.71).


CONCLUSIONS
It is suggested that the CCA IM roughness increases with age, and helps to discriminate between individuals presumed to be healthy and patients with manifest CAD better than the CCA mean and maximum IMT.
Schmidt-Trucksäss
Arno
A
Department of Rehabilitative and Preventative Sports Medicine, Center for Internal Medicine, Freiburg University Hospital, Hugstetter Street 55, D-79106 Freiburg, Germany. schmidt@msm1.ukl.uni-freiburg.de
Sandrock
Markus
M
Cheng
Da-chuan
DC
Müller
Hans-Michael
HM
Baumstark
Manfred W
MW
Rauramaa
Rainer
R
Berg
Aloys
A
Huonker
Martin
M
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging / Q000473:pathology*; D017536:Carotid Artery, Common / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000473:pathology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015588:Observer Variation; D012372:ROC Curve; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D017539:Tunica Intima / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000473:pathology*; D017540:Tunica Media / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000473:pathology*; D014463:Ultrasonography