No abstract

Catheter angiography follow-up was scheduled at 3 to 6 months on a voluntary basis or when in-stent restenosis was suspected clinically after PTAS. The method used for determining percentage of stenosis of Background and Purpose-Reliable data concerning prognosis of patients with intracranial in-stent restenosis (ISR) is lacking. We prospectively studied long-term outcomes of patients with and without a catheter angiography-verified ISR. Methods-Between September 2001 and May 2009, 540 consecutive patients with symptomatic intracranial atherosclerosis received stenting treatment at our institute. Of them, 226 patients with 233 stented arteries had catheter angiography follow-up after stenting and were enrolled into this study. They were clinically followed up until the end of December 2011. Primary end point was ischemic stroke or transient ischemic attack in the territory of the stented artery after the catheter angiography follow-up. ISR was defined as a catheter angiography-verified stenosis of ≥50% within or immediately adjacent (within range of 3 mm) to the implanted stent. Results-During a mean follow-up of 38.9 months, 27 (11.6%, 27/233) primary end point events were recorded.

Xian Fu and Chuming Huang contributed equally to this work Aim: Pulse wave velocity (PWV) has been regarded as the "gold standard" measurement of arterial stiffness (AS), but it is still only used in the assessment of central and peripheral arteries. We constructed a new method to evaluate cerebral AS by measuring PWV using transcranial Doppler (TCD). Methods: In all, 90 healthy subjects who received annual health screening were consecutively enrolled in this study between January 2011 and June 2013. Data on clinical characteristics, brachium-ankle (ba) PWV, and carotid-cerebral (cc) PWV measured with our newly constructed method by two experienced operators were recorded. cc PWV was calculated as the distance between two points in the common carotid artery and proximal part of ipsilateral middle cerebral artery, which was divided by the pulse transit time between these two points where the pulse was measured using TCD. Results: The value of cc PWV was 499.3 78.6 cm/s. Correlation between cc PWV and ba PWV in the assessment of AS was r 0.794 (P 0.001). The concordance between both the above mentioned methods was good. Interobserver and intraobserver reliability using interclass correlation for measuring cc PWV were 0.815 (P 0.001) and 0.939 (P 0.001), respectively. In multivariable analysis, older age ( 4.51, P 0.001) and increased diastolic blood pressure ( 2.39, P 0.001) were independently associated with higher cc PWV. Conclusion: cc PWV measured using TCD may be a promising method for the assessment of human cerebral AS, which is independently associated with age and diastolic blood pressure.

These data indicate oral anticoagulation use is lower in stroke patients with atrial fibrillation in China than that in Western countries, being applied more often in those of younger age, nonmanual occupation, and having less cardiovascular risk factors.