Focused Vascular Ultrasound for the Assessment of Atherosclerosis: A Proof-of-Concept Study

Recommendations for the Assessment of Carotid Arterial Plaque by Ultrasound for the Characterization of Atherosclerosis and Evaluation of Cardiovascular Risk: From the American Society of Echocardiography

“…Recent studies suggest that carotid plaque imaging in patients with normal stress tests provides improved prognostic information: patients without plaque have an excellent prognosis, whereas patients with a normal imaging test for myocardial ischemia, but atherosclerotic plaques in the carotid artery, may benefit from more aggressive medical treatment. [96][97][98][99][100] The combination of carotid plaque assessment with stress testing is a promising area offering enhanced risk stratification. Further multicenter confirmation will allow for consideration of practice recommendations in the future.…”

Interatrial block predicts atrial fibrillation in patients with carotid and coronary artery disease

“…A total of 355 outpatients referred for clinically indicated coronary angiography were recruited from the cardiac catheterization laboratory at the Kingston Health Sciences Center (KHSC) as a part of an ongoing study of peripheral arterial and coronary artery disease and retrospectively analyzed (5). Inclusion criteria were defined as: (I) patients aged ≥18 years able to provide consent; (II) non-emergent outpatients referred for a clinically indicated angiogram for one of: nonspecific chest pain evaluation; stable or unstable angina pectoris; positive stress test; preoperative assessment; old or recent myocardial infarction (MI) (>2 days); (III) a follow-up ECG conducted at KHSC within 12 months of the index angiogram.…”

“…Angiography was performed by an experienced interventional cardiologist at KHSC using the standard Judkins technique on a General Electric System 2100. Angiograms were quantified using a previously established scoring system (5). Significant coronary artery stenosis was defined as luminal diameter reduction of ≥70% within any segment of the main branches of the artery examined or ≥50% stenosis for the left main coronary artery.…”

Point-of-care ultrasound in internal medicine: A position paper by the ultrasound working group of the European federation of internal medicine

“…Internal medicine physicians can acquire advanced competencies in POCUS depending on their interest, training and clinical practice. These include areas such as carotid plaque detection, biliary tree evaluation or severe cardiac valvular abnormalities detection [15,17,48]. These aspects are beyond the scope of this document and we believe that they must be defined and regulated by each internal medicine national society.…”