• Hung-Chen Wang, Wei-Che Lin, Tzu-Ming Yang, Wu-Fu Chen, Yu-Jun Lin, Nai-Wen Tsai, Wen-Neng Chang, and Cheng-Hsien Lu.
• Department of Neurosurgery, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital-Kaohsiung Medical Center, Chang Gung University College of Medicine, Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
• J Clin Ultrasound. 2012 Feb 1; 40 (2): 91-8.

BackgroundVascular complications are important causes of neurologic sequelae among survivors of aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH). However, little is known about the time course of cerebral hemodynamics and outcome in patients with and without angiographically confirmed cerebral vasospasm.MethodsSerial transcranial color-coded sonography (TCCS), angiography, and MRI studies were performed to measure cerebrovascular hemodynamics and assess complications following aneurysmal SAH.ResultsEighteen aneurysmal SAH patients were enrolled. Angiographically confirmed cerebral vasospasm occurred in 14 patients (77.8%), 5 of whom (35.7%) were asymptomatic. The mean blood flow velocity (V(mean) ) of the middle cerebral artery increased significantly as compared with healthy volunteers from day 1 to day 15, and substantially decreased thereafter. The V(mean) of middle cerebral artery was significantly higher in patients with than in patients without angiographically confirmed cerebral vasospasm from day 3 to day 12. Compared to angiography, TCCS detected cerebral vasospasm with 85.7% sensitivity, 100% specificity, 100% positive predictive value, and 66.7% negative predictive value. MRI-evidenced cerebral infarctions occurred in nine patients (50%), three of whom (33.3%) were asymptomatic.ConclusionsThis study demonstrated that approximately one-third of acute phase aneurysmal SAH patients have asymptomatic delayed cerebral infarction, which was undetected by TCCS in one-third of them. This may explain why the accuracy of TCCS to predict clinical symptomatic cerebral vasospasm is suboptimal.Copyright © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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