Clinical relevance of musical murmurs in color-coded carotid and transcranial duplex sonographies.
OBJECTIVE
Musical murmurs (MMs), sometimes called seagull cry, goose cry, honks, or cooing murmur, are murmurs with a single frequency that sounds like a musical tone. Doppler detections usually show mirror-image parallel strings or bands of low to moderate frequency. Musical murmurs are mostly described in cardiac murmurs and have seldom been mentioned in cerebrovascular disease.


METHODS
A retrospective review of 12,000 patients from our neurosonographic data base of the past 7 years was conducted to find patients who had MMs during color-coded carotid and transcranial duplex sonographies.


RESULTS
Sixty-six musical murmurs were found in 60 patients (0.5% of all studied patients). There were 44 men and 16 women with a mean age of 63.8 years. Musical murmurs may occur with or without simultaneous turbulent flows, or very close to a high-intensity frequency (with systolic spindles) turbulent flow. Musical murmurs are detected more frequently in intracranial vessels (94%) than in extracranial cervical arteries. The pathologic changes corresponding to the area of MMs were high-grade stenosis of the arteries (58 MMs), small arteries serving as collateral circulation (5 MMs), carotid cavernous sinus fistulas (2 MMs), and Moyamoya disease (1 MM). Fifty (88%) of 57 patients with stenotic arterial lesions had histories of cerebral infarction or transient ischemic attack, and 64% of the cerebrovascular events occurred on the side appropriate to the MMs.


CONCLUSIONS
The presence of MMs in color-coded carotid duplex and transcranial color-coded duplex sonography imply severe underlying vascular diseases that require prompt treatment. Further cerebral angiographic study is warranted to clarify the underlying pathology in patients with MMs.
Lin
S-K
SK
Department of Neurology, Buddhist Xindian Tzu Chi General Hospital, 289 Jian Guo Road, Xindian City, Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China. sk2022@tzuchi.com.tw
Ryu
S-J
SJ
Chang
Y-J
YJ
Lee
T-H
TH
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D002340:Carotid Artery Diseases / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D016893:Carotid Stenosis / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging; D020216:Carotid-Cavernous Sinus Fistula / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging; D002533:Cerebral Angiography; D002539:Cerebral Arterial Diseases / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D002544:Cerebral Infarction / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging; D002560:Cerebrovascular Circulation / Q000502:physiology; D003097:Collateral Circulation / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D002546:Ischemic Attack, Transient / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009072:Moyamoya Disease / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging; D012039:Regional Blood Flow / Q000502:physiology; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D013016:Sound; D018615:Ultrasonography, Doppler, Color / Q000379:methods*; D017585:Ultrasonography, Doppler, Transcranial / Q000379:methods*