The neuroradiology journal
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The objective of this study was to determine the accuracy of individual radiologists in detection of vascular injury in patients after penetrating brain injury (PBI) based on head CT findings at admission. We retrospectively evaluated 54 PBI patients who underwent admission head CT and digital subtraction angiography (DSA), used here as a reference standard. Two readers reviewed the CT images to determine the presence or absence of the 29 CT variables of injury profile and quantified selected variables. ⋯ The area under ROC curve (AUC) was higher for CT scores obtained from the sixth set (average of five sets of scores) of variable rank score 0.75 (95% CI 0.62-0.88) and for the rest of the data sets, the value ranged from 0.70 (95% CI 0.56-0.84) to 0.74 (95% CI 0.6-0.88). In conclusion, radiologists may be able to recommend DSA with a fair accuracy rate in selected patients, deemed 'high-risk' for developing intracranial vascular injuries after PBI based on admission CT studies. A better approach needs to be developed to reduce the false positive rate to avoid unnecessary emergency DSA.
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Case Reports
Symptomatic anterior cerebral artery vasospasm after brainstem hemangioblastoma resection. A case report.
Diffuse cerebral vasospasm is a rare complication after brain tumour resection as opposed to that following an aneurysmal subarachnoid haemorrhage. Sellar tumours are among the most common pathologies and locations associated with this complication. ⋯ We describe a case of diffuse symptomatic vasospasm mainly involving the right anterior cerebral artery, angiographically confirmed, after resection of a haemangioblastoma of the medulla in an adult patient with von Hippel-Lindau disease. The possible pathogenesis of this phenomenon is discussed.