Index by author

The authors set out to determine the agreement between collateral flow assessment on CTA and DSA and their respective associations with clinical outcome. They used patient data that was randomized in MR CLEAN with middle cerebral artery occlusion and both baseline CTA images and complete DSA runs. Collateral flow on CTA and DSA was graded 0 (absent) to 3 (good).Of 45 patients with evaluable imaging data, collateral flow was graded on CTA as 0, 1, 2, 3 for 3, 10, 20, and 12 patients, respectively, and on DSA for 12, 17, 10, and 6 patients, respectively. The adjusted odds ratio for favorable outcome on mRS was 2.27 and 1.29 for CTA and DSA, respectively. The relationship between the dichotomized collateral score and mRS 0–2 was significant for CTA, but not for DSA. They conclude that the commonly applied collateral flow assessment on CTA and DSA showed large differences and that these techniques are not interchangeable. CTA was significantly associated with mRS at 90 days, whereas DSA was not.