Regional angiographic grading system for collateral flow: correlation with cerebral infarction in patients with middle cerebral artery occlusion.
OBJECTIVE
Collateral flow plays an important role in maintaining tissue viability in proximal large vessel occlusion. We developed and tested a regional angiographic collateral grading system for patients with angiographically confirmed acute symptomatic middle cerebral artery occlusion to predict regional infarction.


METHODS
A subset of 42 patients was selected from 180 patients enrolled in the Prolyse in Acute Cerebral Thromboembolism II (PROACT II) trial. Readers evaluated baseline cerebral angiograms in a blinded fashion for the degree of regional collateral circulation, which was graded on a 4-point scale in each of 15 anatomic regions. Regional and total collateral flow scores were compared with the presence or absence of infarction on 7- to 10-day follow-up computed tomography (CT), as well as clinical outcome as assessed by National Institute of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) scores.


RESULTS
The collateral flow score on baseline angiography accurately predicted infarction, demonstrating a receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.87 (95% CI: 0.83 to 0.91) for all regions. Collateral grades on baseline angiography correlated moderately with infarct volume on follow-up CT scan at 7 to 10 days (R=0.61; P=0.0001). Collateral grades also correlated with follow-up NIHSS scores for patients who received thrombolysis (R=0.36 to 0.49, P<0.05), but not for control patients.


CONCLUSIONS
An angiographic grading system for regional collateral flow accurately predicts the extent and location of cerebral infarction. This study corroborates the correlation between the presence of collateral flow, infarction volume, and clinical outcome, and it reinforces the need to control for collateral flow in clinical trials.
Kim
Jane J
JJ
Department of Radiology, University of California, San Francisco, Calif, USA.
Fischbein
Nancy J
NJ
Lu
Ying
Y
Pham
Daniel
D
Dillon
William P
WP
D002533:Cerebral Angiography / Q000379:methods*; D002560:Cerebrovascular Circulation; D003097:Collateral Circulation; D006801:Humans; D020244:Infarction, Middle Cerebral Artery / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D011379:Prognosis; D012372:ROC Curve; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed